


The East Wind Rises

by PseudoLeigha



Series: The Reasons Mary Potter Still Isn't Done (Works in Progress) [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Euros Holmes is basically young!fem!Tom, Euros is a legilimens, Euros is adopted by the Grangers, Hermione is Sherlock and Euros' cousin, Just sayin', Snape gets an apprentice, mourning!Snape, recursive AU, this is basically canon and you cannot convince me otherwise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 07:03:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11412735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: This is a recursive AU, based on the story Between Lives.The premise of Between Lives is that Hermione is Sherlock's half-cousin. In the Mary Potter Series and most of my AUs, Hermione and Sherlock's parents have been estranged since 1983 over the institutionalization of Euros Holmes, and they met exactly once, when Hermione was three and Sherlock nine.In Between Lives, Hermione over-uses her time turner, closing that age-gap slightly, and ends up living with Sherlock around 2002, after the end of the war, but well before the beginning of Sherlock Series 1. She learns that Euros is a powerful legilimens in 2017 (at the end of Series 4), helps recapture her, and ensures that she gets kissed by a dementor before she is returned to Sherrinford.In The East Wind Rises, Emma won a particular argument with her elder half-brother back in 1983, resulting in the Grangers fostering Euros, rather than leaving her in an institution. Then Severus Snape got involved and, well… let's just say Voldemort might have a little bit of competition come 1994.





	1. Point of Departure

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably one of the cringier stories I've started. It's up there with Fall Back, and I don't even have the excuse that this is my first fic ever. *shrugs* I keep writing it because I think it's an interesting point in Severus' life, and I want to see what he would do if he was essentially given full control and as much influence possible over young!fem!Tom (which is basically how Euros is portrayed in Sherlock canon).
> 
> Basically, I don't really like some of Euros' characterization, which seems to be somewhat overpowered to me, but I do think it's on point with how she was portrayed in Sherlock, and not entirely outside the realm of how Tom would have been at her age in canon, so I let it stand.
> 
> More importantly, at least to me, I really don't like using psychological diagnoses explicitly in writing, because I'm not a psychologist or any sort of expert on the history of psychology, but I've done so here for reasons related to the adults in Euros' life having preconceived notions about her behavior and influencing her development and the way they interact with her.
> 
> Technically she would probably have been diagnosed with Conduct Disorder under the DSM III by actual professionals. The Holmes adults call her a psychopath due to their familiarity with the ASPD literature of the 1970s and early 1980s, and a propensity to equate adult-level intelligence with adult-level neurological development (which is simply not the case). Severus calls her a psychopath from a more lay-perspective, being less familiar with the terminology of muggle psychology (he's only twenty-five or so the first time they meet and hasn't seriously started studying mind-healing or psychology yet), but very familiar with the legilimentic presentation of a lack of empathy/emotion from his time with the Death Eaters. He distinguishes between inherent lack of emotion and the development of emotional responses that are not normal and labels them psychopathy and sociopathy respectively having picked up the terms and a vague connotation of them from the little abnormal psychology he has read over the course of his life. So far as I know, this is consistent with general use of the terms in the pre-1970s literature on the subject.
> 
> There are, of course, many other disorders that could result in a lack of emotional response in a child, and personally, I do think it would be too soon to stick her with any sort of diagnosis, but Severus doesn't know about them, and the Holmeses are making assumptions based on her apparent attempt to burn down the house, her role in the disappearance of Sherlock's best friend (though they don't know that she actually killed him), and her behavior while institutionalized.
> 
> So yeah, my use of psychology in this fic is juvenile and heavy-handed and in some cases just wrong under current definitions and diagnosis protocols, and I know that, and I'm not entirely comfortable with it, but then, the way psychology is treated in Sherlock and Harry Potter could be similarly characterized, so I'm leaving it as it is. I don't plan for it to have a huge impact on the plot after characterization and inter-character relationship dynamics are established, but I felt it was important to include to establish where the various adults in the fic are coming from.

" _Fine!_ " Siger Holmes snapped at his much younger half-sister. "If you want her so badly, take her! But I warn you, Emma, no good will come of this!"

The blonde sneered at him, normally-warm blue eyes narrowed fiercely, curls trembling as she shook with suppressed fury. "As though some good _would_ come of leaving her in _that place_ ," she spat. She threw a folder onto the table between them. "Sign it!" she demanded.

He did, muttering the whole time about how this was bound to end in arson or worse. "Don't come crying to me when she finally snaps and murders Hermione in her sleep," he warned her, piling guilt atop fear with a hateful scowl.

Emma would not be moved. "Fuck you, Siger," she drawled, reclaiming the paperwork. "And the horse you rode in on."

"You can't teach a psychopath to feel, Emma." His tone was the most condescending she had heard in weeks, which was saying quite a lot, given his ego, his favored argumentative tactics, and the fact that this argument had been raging for those self-same weeks.

"False assumption, you patronizing shit," she snapped. "I'm not going to teach her to _feel_ , I'm going to teach her to _behave_."

Siger sneered far more magnificently than Emma could ever hope to do – she simply didn't have the nose for it. "Best of luck with that, sister."

She stalked from the room without dignifying his reply with a response, only to encounter her elder nephew in the doorway of the next room down the corridor, ostensibly reading a newspaper as he leaned against the frame.

"Mycroft," she greeted him, straightening her hair and clothing as she restrained her temper.

"Aunt Emma."

"I take it you overheard?"

"Much as I hate to agree with Father on… well, _anything_ ," he nodded, with an entirely false self-depreciating smile, "I can't help but think he's right, in this instance."

Emma reached up to pat his cheek: at eighteen, he was a full ten inches taller than she. "Don't worry, Myc. We both know Euros is the cleverest of us all, but she's still a child for all that. Now that we know where she's coming from… Well, in some ways, that makes parenting easier, I should think. Predictable."

"You're going to underestimate her."

His aunt smiled coldly. "Oh, I really won't." She let some warmth creep back into her expression as she added, "Besides, I'm looking forward to the challenge."

The young man sighed dramatically. "This whole bloody family is insane."

She laughed. "A bit. You just look after yourself and Sherlock, and let me take care of Euros. It'll be fine, Myc."

She was somewhat surprised to find herself engulfed in a quick hug, though much less so to hear him mutter, "I hope so. If you tell anyone about this, I will deny it."

"Your secret inclination toward spontaneous embraces is safe with me," she joked.

He let her go as if burned, toying with the paper he still held in his left hand. "Thank you," he said stiffly; she knew it wasn't just about his reputation. He had always tried to be a good big brother. She rather thought it was a shame fate had given him such challenging younger siblings, because it was a terribly thankless job.

She nodded. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a child to retrieve."

"Best of luck," he nodded back, his words echoing his father, though his tone was far more sincere. "Don't hesitate to call, if…"

"You're a sweetheart, Myc. But it's not your job to worry about me, or Euros."

"Or Hermione?" he inserted shrewdly.

"Or Hermione," she agreed. "I do have _some_ inkling as to what I'm doing, you know."

"I hope so," he muttered, so quietly she almost didn't hear it.

She let him have the last word as well, bidding him a silent farewell with another pat on the cheek.

…

Euros was a pretty child, wide eyed and innocent-looking, if one could get past the utterly blank expression she normally wore. She stood in the observation room at her facility and stared intently at the two-way glass separating her from Emma, as though she knew exactly where her aunt stood, despite the barrier.

"Are you certain about this, Mrs. Granger?" the psychologist beside her asked. "As you know, we have reason to believe that Miss Holmes is…"

"A psychopath? A danger to herself and others? Incapable of true remorse or reform? Using me? Mocking this institution and the entire discipline of psychology by telling you exactly what you want to hear?" Emma raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the man, who looked to be about Siger's age – twenty years or so her elder.

He flushed. "Well, that is, um…"

"Save it, doctor," she advised him. "Your analysis is invalidated not only by the fact that she is a child, but also by the fact that it is based largely in part on an absence of evidence. You took the fact that she responded to my advice to be indicative of her manipulative tendencies, rather than an indication that she is indeed capable of behaving as a more or less normal child of her age."

"What did you _tell_ her?" the doctor asked, his tone verging on petulance.

Emma smirked. "That if she could prove to me that she is capable of behaving like a human, I would get her out of here."

"Like a _human_?"

Emma laughed. "Yes, _human,_ as opposed to an untamed animal throwing tantrums as she was, or that 'in this world but not of it' thing she does so well."

The psychologist frowned. "Mrs. Granger, I really don't think –"

"If you're about to tell me off for othering her, don't bother. I'm not the one who decided she wasn't human; she is. Humans, in her eyes, are infinitely slow, crawling insects. Goldfish at best. Her mere existence in comparison to the idiots who surround her is othering. But she was not sentenced here by the courts, only her father, and I have his permission to take her away as your methods have proven to be ineffectual at best, so you _will_ release her into my care. _Now_." She held his gaze with a cold stare, the hint of a challenge lurking around the promise to crush _him_ like one of the aforementioned 'infinitely slow, crawling insects' if he denied her.

On the other side of the glass, Euros smiled.

The man blustered for several minutes more, but the paperwork was undeniable. He had to allow the child to leave, for all his misgivings about her and the woman who was, apparently, now her legal guardian.

…

"Ground rules, Emily Elizabeth," Emma said directly as she entered the observation room. The child did not respond, still making faces at the mirror, but her aunt knew she was listening. She could hardly help but be aware of everything around her, and seemed to forget nothing. "You will not harm Hermione, Dan, me, or yourself. I will define what constitutes harm and ensure that you are informed of these definitions and why I consider them harmful. You will make an effort to act human at all times. I will help you understand how and why humans act as they do. And you will ask for and receive my permission before doing anything that may result in the death of a human or animal, or property damage in excess of twenty pounds. These rules are non-negotiable, and if I find you have deliberately violated them, I will have you returned to an institution such as this one. If you comply, you will be rewarded with greater freedom from supervision and access to other people."

For the first time since Emma had entered the room, Euros deigned to look at her. "Sherlock?"

"Perhaps, in time."

"Hermione?"

"Not as a reward: you will be living with her, so I could hardly keep you apart."

"What probability of death or property damage?"

Emma hid a smirk, knowing she had won. "If an activity has a greater than one percent probability of death _and/or_ a five percent probability of property damage, I expect to be consulted."

The little girl smiled and walked around the table, throwing her arms around her aunt. "I'm so glad you came to get me. Can we leave, now?"

Emma correctly interpreted this reaction as an acceptance of her rules: when left to her own devices, Euros was less inclined to hugging than Mycroft. "Very good," she murmured, returning the embrace. "And yes, let's do," she added for the benefit of the psychologist on the other side of the glass.

A moment later, the door opened from the outside. Euros examined the doubtful-looking man for a moment before asking, "Aunt Emma, why didn't you tell Dr. Fawcett that you're a doctor, too?"

She giggled at his consternation, though Emma agreed that it was quite evident in his expression and bearing that considered himself superior to her due to his expertise and education.

"Because, Euros, sometimes it is to one's advantage to be underestimated. And besides, putting him in his place would not have endeared me to him, nor would it have aided in securing your release. Shall we?"

The girl took her hand and skipped out of the room. "I'm going to get my clothes, and then we're going to the car," she narrated. Emma presumed she meant to say, 'Let me just grab my things, and then we can leave.' Self-explanatory phrases did not come naturally to the girl, who considered her actions easily interpreted in most cases.

_Still_ , she thought, _it's a start_.


	2. Magic

Living with Emma was somewhat restrictive, Euros found, but far less so than living at the institution, and her aunt was as good as her word, allowing her more privacy and less direct supervision as soon as she proved she could control herself in public and around Hermione. Not that she would have tried to play the same sort of games with Hermione as she did with Sherlock, anyway. Not only was Hermione too little, but getting her attention was not a challenge in the least; she practically begged her mother to let them sleep in the same room, and spent all her time following Euros around like a misplaced duckling.

They spent much of their time with Emma, who had taken it upon herself to homeschool Euros. This involved more lessons on why people acted the way they did and what they were thinking and how Emma could tell than any sort of standard maths or literature or science curriculum (which was perfectly acceptable to Euros, because she had long since surpassed her peers academically). They visited cafes, parks, and libraries in search of people for watching, Euros cataloguing their behaviors as Emma corrected her own, and Hermione explored ahead of them, apparently oblivious to their discussion. In the evenings, Emma let her read the adult books that lined the shelves in the den – the sort that her father had forbidden after Mycroft had explained to him her ill-conceived attempt to examine her own musculature. She still had the scar, and she knew that Emma knew about that, too, because she had revised the first rule to include such experiments under the definition of 'harm'.

Dan did not like Euros. He did not like the fact that Emma had taken a leave of absence from their young dental practice in order to stay home and supervise her, leaving him the sole breadwinner in the family. He did not like the Uncanny Valley effect of interacting with her enough to catch the flaws in her human façade, he did not like her obsession with Hermione, and he especially did not like the way Hermione idolized her new big sister.

Euros was aware of this, but she did not particularly care, and as his disliking her did not fall under any of Emma's definitions of harm, she saw no reason to attempt to change the situation.

Emma apparently did, because after three months, she decreed that the girls would be going to daycare three days a week, while she returned to work. This was, she said, not only a _compromise_ with Dan (Emma was a big proponent of the idea of _compromise_ ), but also a reward for Euros, to be essentially unsupervised those three days a week. There was, of course, an adult present, but she was just a normal human, so for all intents and purposes, Euros could get away with murder during daycare, if she wanted.

She didn't, really. She was perfectly content to spend most of her unsupervised hours attempting to teach the three-year-old Hermione how to see things like she did, rather than like a dull, slow human, or observing her reactions to stimuli in an effort to understand how and why she reacted.

Children were, in many ways, simpler than adults, Euros knew, but in many ways more foreign to her, because they often acted without any reason she could see. Emma insisted these responses were emotionally motivated, but that wasn't any great help to Euros, because she seemed to be lacking any such motivation herself from which to interpret them. So she fell back on pattern recognition, which required many, many hours of observation.

And in the course of that observation, she had discovered that there was something _strange_ about Hermione. Not in the way that she was disappointingly and resolutely human-like in her ability to think and speak (though Euros would admit that in comparison to the other larval humans at daycare, Hermione was rather advanced, and she hoped that this meant her little cousin would grow up to be more like Emma and Mycroft and Sherlock, i.e., tolerable company, rather than one of _them_ ). That was, unfortunately, all too common.

The _strangeness_ manifested mostly in the laws of physics as she understood them occasionally taking a short break around the younger girl, allowing books and toys to appear at her side when Euros was certain they had been placed on too-high shelves only moments before, and the lights flickering as Hermione was agitated by a storm, and, on the occasion which convinced Euros that she had not simply missed observing an action or confounding variable, an inexplicable glow surrounding herself.

The incident occurred on the twenty-third of August, 1983, just after Euros' ninth birthday, and shortly before Hermione's fourth. Euros had been living with the Grangers for four and a half months, and it was a Tuesday, a home day. Emma was writing in the den, and Euros was reading Tolkien to Hermione. The younger girl curled up beside her in bed and followed along – she was learning to read longer stories herself – until she suddenly looked up at Euros' face, excitement etched across her own.

"Hey, Euros?"

"Yes, Hermione?"

"Get up, I want to do something."

"What?"

"You'll _see_. I had an _idea_."

"What kind of idea?"

"I'm Glorfindel and you're Frodo. Get _up_."

Euros humored her, though she had to say, "If either one of us is a hobbit, it's you. You're shorter, and I'm much more elf-like."

Hermione shook her bushy head. "Nuh _uh._ I have _fëa._ That makes me an elf!"

Euros started to explain that humans didn't really have magic, and the book was only a story, but she trailed off as she noticed a glow emanating from the hand Hermione was holding in both of hers. It crept slowly up Euros' arm, warm and not unpleasant. It made her chest feel slightly tight. She stared at her cousin, for once shocked beyond all reason. "What?" she asked blankly, examining her free hand, which was by now glowing as well, and the expression of concentration on the younger girl's face.

She could hardly avoid the conclusion that one was connected to the other, especially since the glow faded as soon as Hermione let go of her hand.

She panted, as though she had just done something very strenuous, but looked highly pleased with herself. "Did it work?"

Before Euros could ask what was supposed to have happened, three adults appeared in their bedroom, displacing the air with a series of loud cracking sounds.

Hermione screamed and attempted to both hide behind Euros and wrap herself around her at the same time, causing both of them to lose their balance, and Euros to fall on top of Hermione.

By the time Emma appeared in the doorway, approximately seventeen seconds after the first _crack_ , Hermione was crying, the three strangers were pointing sticks at the girls, and Euros was trying to get up without further crushing her cousin.

"It was an accident!" she said quickly, on seeing her aunt's disapproving face.

"Of course it was," one of the strangers said, in a tone Euros recognized as sarcasm.

"Blake!" another snapped.

"Who the fuck are you, and how did you get into my house?" Emma asked, glaring at them.

Euros thought the more important questions were, 'Where had Aunt Emma gotten a handgun, and how had she retrieved it so quickly on the way to the bedroom?' but she knew better than to ask. One of the very first lessons Emma had taught her was that she shouldn't draw attention to questionably legal possessions and activities. Besides, she rather thought the strangers deserved to be threatened, appearing so rudely as they had.

They weren't much better at acting threatened than Euros was, though. Two of them looked confused. The third pointed his stick at Emma and a bolt of red light flashed across the room, somewhat slower than light normally travelled, since Euros could follow it with her eyes, but quickly enough that Emma could not quite avoid it, and she fell to the ground, apparently unconscious. A second bolt of light formed a blue bubble around the dropped pistol.

"Malcom! What did you do that for?" Sarcastic Blake asked, now sounding more startled than sarcastic.

"She had a gun!"

"What?"

"A – a gun. You know, a firearm?"

"Oh, those muggle piercing hex machines? I thought they were, you know… longer."

"For the love of – _no_ , you idiot. They come in different varieties. Shotguns are more like… blasting hexes. With shrapnel."

"Like the Dark variation on –"

"Merlin's beard, will you two shut up?!" the last intruder finally spoke. She must have been in charge, because the two men did.

"My aunt's questions still stand," Euros pointed out calmly, now on her feet, with Hermione whimpering behind her. Euros could feel the younger girl trembling as she pressed herself to her back, but she suspected that she would be forgiven for not cowering in fear, given the extenuating circumstances. "You appeared out of nowhere. You _displaced air_. How? And why? Who are you?"

The woman in charge sighed. "My name is Florence Brightnel. These gentlemen are Malcom Westin and Blake Morris. We are with the Ministry of Magic; Accidental Magic Reversal Squad Three." She flashed a glowing purple badge momentarily. "Our sensors detected an uncontrolled discharge of magical energy from this location. You're not on the muggleborn register, so the department sent us to investigate."

"Magic," Euros repeated flatly.

Hermione made a little _eep_ sound.

"You must have noticed _something_ ," Sarcastic Blake said. "That degree of power doesn't just do _nothing_."

"I think your sensors must have made a mistake," Euros lied. Why, she could not have said, exactly, aside from a vague disinclination to allow them to know that her little cousin was undoubtedly the source of the disturbance. What if they took her away, like Euros had been taken away from the Manor?

The end of the stick in Malcom's hand glowed red. "Don't try to lie to us, girl," he said sharply. "What did you do?"

" _Nothing_ ," Euros said, perfectly truthfully. The light glowed green.

The three strangers whispered amongst themselves for a moment, flashing darting looks at Hermione, her curly head peeking out from behind Euros' back.

It was Florence who approached them when the conference was concluded, kneeling so as to be more of a height with them and speaking in the slightly babyish, mollifying voice of one who thinks they are really good with children. It was uncannily similar to the daycare supervisor. "Okay, sweethearts, we need to know what happened here, and then we'll go and you can forget all about us. We'll start with something easy: What are your names?"

Euros didn't answer, refusing on principle to acknowledge any such patronizing tone.

"Come on, loves. You already know mine. Florence, remember? You can call me Flo…"

Euros started to say that if 'Flo' wanted to foster reciprocation, she could begin by explaining how she and her colleagues had entered the house, but before she could, Hermione, less wise to the ways of adults, caved. "I'm 'Mione," she mumbled, still hiding behind Euros. "This's my cousin Euros."

The men exchanged a look Euros was certain held some significance at the mention of her name.

"Very _good_ ," 'Flo' cooed. "It's very nice to meet you, Mione, Euros."

"Only the people I _like_ are allowed to call me Euros," she noted. "My name is Emily."

The men relaxed. _Why?_

"Emily, then," 'Flo' agreed. "Could one of you please tell me what happened just before we arrived?"

Hermione, coaxed out by the praise and soft voice, opened her mouth again, but Euros quickly covered it with a hand, ignoring the smaller girl's squirming and the uncomfortable wetness of tongue against palm. "Not until _you_ tell _us_ how you got here in the first place!"

'Flo' looked displeased, and Sarcastic Blake drawled, " _Magic_ , obviously."

Malcom glared at him. "It's called _apparition_ ," he explained. "It's kind of like teleportation."

Hermione stomped on Euros' foot, so she decided this explanation was sufficient, despite the complete lack of specifics and removed her hand.

"I was just trying to make Euros happy!" the younger girl explained, glaring at her cousin.

"Why?" Euros had to ask.

"B'cause! Reasons!"

Sarcastic Blake snorted. Malcom elbowed him. Before Euros could probe for more specifics regarding this urge to try to make her happy, 'Flo' sighed.

"Emily, we're going to need to perform a few tests, to ensure that your cousin did not hurt you and remove any remnants of the spell."

Euros was very familiar with _tests_ after her time in _that place_. "I'm fine," she said coldly. "Nothing happened." Malcom cleared his throat. The light was glowing red again. It made Euros want to scream. "Don't touch me," she glared at the woman. "I don't want your _tests_."

"Don't be ridiculous," 'Flo' said, pointing her stick at Euros. "You won't feel a thing."

"She never feels anything," Hermione volunteered. "That's the _problem_."

Euros covered her mouth again, and received a kick in the knee for her trouble. While she was distracted, the woman produced a web of light that settled over her like snow, its touch slight, but _definitely_ present, like a mist-net wrapping around her securely. Euros shuddered, unable to even imagine what it might be doing, and made a grab for the stick. 'Flo' jerked back, and the trapped feeling of the light-web vanished.

"A short lived _beneficia_ approximation of a cheering charm," she announced to her companions. "No harm done, and it's entirely dissipated."

"Got lucky, then," Malcom noted. "Obliviations all around?"

'Flo' nodded. "I'll do Miss Mione if you want to take care of Miss Emily, Blake."

Malcom was already _levitating_ Emma out of the room. _How?_ 'Magic' wasn't a sufficient answer.

"Sure. Might as well have _some_ reason to've been dragged all the way out here," Sarcastic Blake said.

"Careful," 'Flo' warned him. "She might fight you."

"She's a _muggle_ ," he drawled. "What do you take me for?"

"A sarcastic, overconfident jerk?" Euros suggested.

'Flo' laughed, but Sarcastic Blake glared and pointed his stick at her with a flourish. " _Obliviate_ ," he intoned.

All at once she felt the same energy that had settled over her before sinking into her, clawing its way into her memories, making the past few minutes grow fuzzy as it went. She struck back at it on instinct, as though its tendrils were fingers to be broken, _knowing_ , somehow, that she did not want it to succeed in whatever it intended. She _could not_ let it achieve a hold in her mind, and she _would not_. By the time it retreated, she was breathing hard, heart racing, as though she had been running, not frozen in place under attack by some sort of hostile magic.

Sarcastic Blake looked confused, and not a little angry. She charged, intending to take away the stick that seemed to be so fundamental to the magic, but ropes exploded from nowhere with a _crack_ , tangling her limbs and sending her crashing to the floor. She heard Hermione shouting her name distantly as the man's features filled her entire range of vision, looming over her. His brown eyes glistened strangely as they peered into her own light blue.

" _Legilimens_ ," he hissed.

This attack was stronger and more direct than the last, like an ice pick to the frontal lobe, an intrusion into her thoughts and her very _being_. It was foreign. She could not stand it. If she could have, she would have screamed, but all of her focus was on her mind, not her body. Instead she pummeled the invasive presence with every foul memory she could think of, caging it as she had been caged in the institution and _wailing_ at it until she sensed it had begun to try to flee, rather than proceed. She opened doorways, leading _out,_ letting it go, chasing it and beating at it as it went. As it left her, a rush of _something_ did as well. (How she _hated_ not having the proper words!) Power? Some magic of her own?

She opened her eyes, unaware that she had closed them, to see her attacker on the other side of the room, holding his head as though it hurt every bit as much as her own. The ropes were gone. She rolled over onto her side and vomited, which did absolutely nothing to lessen her migraine.

"Blake?" 'Flo' said, looking around from whatever she was doing to Hermione, who stared blankly, as though in a trance. Her voice _hurt_ , like an augmented fourth where one expected a perfect fifth, too high and too loud, too.

"Okay, not a muggle," he grumbled, that sound no better. Euros clutched at her ears, but she could still hear him say, "And no untrained child should be that good an occlumens," before sending a red light at her. She had just enough time to realize that it was the same shade as the one that had knocked out Emma before it overwhelmed her as well.

…

When Euros woke, there was a hole in her memories. She could feel it there, an unnatural patch of time during which she could not remember what she had been doing, with none of the usual sensations of having gone to sleep beforehand. She was lying in bed, with Hermione curled up at her side. The context suggested that they had both fallen asleep during the scene where Glorfindel tried to heal Frodo, but she had marked the page as she always did, and she did not recall having read the pages leading up to it. It was unsettling.

She let Hermione continue to sleep, and slipped out to the den, where Emma was working on an article for a dental journal.

"Hello, Euros," Emma greeted her, looking up from her computer with a start. "Are you alright?"

"I… don't know," Euros admitted. "I… maybe?" This response garnered concern. "I just woke up, but I don't remember falling asleep."

Emma smiled reassuringly. "I wouldn't worry about it overly much. Let me know if it happens again, though, okay?"

She nodded and proceeded into the kitchen to get a glass of water. _Very unsettling indeed_ , she revised, as she realized it was nearly four o'clock, rather than the two-thirty or so she had expected.

…

It was not until several days later, when they returned to the Lord of the Rings, that she recalled exactly what had happened in that time she could not remember.

She began reading where her marker lay, only to be immediately corrected. "You _missed_ something, Euros," Hermione whined. "The Nazgûls were attacking, remember? Back _here_." She flipped to the previous chapter.

"The plural of Nazgûl is Nazgûl," Euros corrected absently. "Like moose," but she began reading without complaint, trying to decide whether it was more or less disconcerting to know that her cousin was apparently missing the same chunk of time as herself.

She had not reached a conclusion half an hour later, when they reached the scene where they had apparently been interrupted.

An undeniable sense of déjà vu struck as Hermione said, "Hey, Euros?"

"Yes, Hermione?"

"Get up, I want to do something."

Euros stood, trying to determine what, exactly was going on, here, and why she felt as though she had done this before.

Hermione grinned, taking her cousin's left hand in both of hers. A soft, warm glow ignited at the places their skin touched and began to creep up Euros' wrist. _Magic_.

Euros snatched her hand away as the memories flooded back, inducing a headache nearly as crippling as the one that followed her mental battle with Sarcastic Blake.

"Euros? What's wrong?!" Hermione exclaimed, obviously concerned that she was at fault for her cousin's sudden reaction. Which, Euros supposed, she was, in a way, though not nearly so much as Accidental Magic Reversal Team Three.

"Hermione," she said uncertainly. "What would you say if I told you used magic on me on Tuesday?"

"Um…"

"We read this same passage, and you wanted to try to make me happy – God knows why, as I'm perfectly content the way I am – and you cast a spell on me that alerted the Ministry of Magic and they sent a team of… of magicians or mages, or whatever they're called, to find out what happened, and make us forget all about it?"

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, yes, I'm fine, now, but you're not. Listen. Do you remember me taking my bookmark out of the book earlier, before you said we were in the wrong chapter?"

Hermione nodded.

"Do you remember me putting it _in_ the book on Tuesday?"

"I was asleep," Hermione said. "I thought you read ahead."

"I wouldn't read fiction without you," Euros pointed out. "Do you remember falling asleep? Being tired? Do you remember getting in bed? You were playing with the Legos when I started reading on Tuesday."

Hermione was starting to look scared. She shook her head. "No. Just the story, where I said, and… you're right. I wasn't in bed. How did I get there, Euros?"

So Euros explained what she now recalled, in every detail she thought potentially relevant. The telling took nearly twice as long as the experience. By the end of the recounting, Hermione was obviously torn between anger and curiosity.

"Do you think I can do other things?" she asked.

Euros smirked. "June fourth, your stuffed bear appeared at your side less than a minute after I saw it on the top shelf; you were in exactly the same spot, and nothing else had been moved. June tenth, we spent half an hour looking for the Hobbit before you found it sitting on the bed, in plain sight, where I had already looked. June twenty-seventh, Masie Thompson's shoelaces tied themselves together after she was making fun of the way we talk. July second, we had that big thunderstorm, and all the lights kept flickering."

"That could be a coincidence," Hermione argued.

"I would have thought so too, except the same thing happened on the fourth at daycare, too, and I don't think both this house and that building have the same faulty wiring. Whatever it was, it didn't affect the neighbors so it wasn't a grid surge. July eighteenth, Justin Pinkerton's remote controlled car died after he called you a freak."

"I thought that was you," Hermione flushed.

"No, I told Jeff Thompson that Justin called Maisie a bad name, so Jeff shoved sand down his pants when they let us go outside. July twentieth –"

"Okay," Hermione interrupted. "You can stop."

Euros grinned. "Now, granted, some of those things probably were coincidence. But not all of them. Not given that there is clearly magic at work, too."

"Oh. So what do we do now that we know?" the younger girl asked, staring at her hands warily.

Her cousin's grin grew wider. " _Experiments_."

…

The girls' experiments started small, with exercises in levitation and mind-reading, inspired by stories of psionic powers. Euros was unsurprised to find that Hermione was by far the quicker of the two of them when it came to mastering the former: it seemed strong emotions were the key to successfully making an object fly. She, however, was always correct when it came to guessing which card her cousin had drawn, or replicating a figure as she drew in the next room, where Hermione could not seem to master any sort of clairvoyance at all.

They quickly escalated to making the lights flicker intentionally and (after attaining permission from Emma to light a candle), pyrokinesis. Euros was able to manage the task after staring at it for several minutes, envisioning the very molecules and atoms of the wick vibrating faster and faster, until they burst into flame. Hermione melted half of it by glaring angrily, pointing dramatically, and shouting _'Fotia!'_

(Hermione had decided after a debate which was, in Euros' opinion, rather silly, that Greek was appropriate as a magical language, because both of their names were Greek in origin. Euros had been the one to acquire a Greek dictionary, in the hopes that her baby cousin could be induced to learn the language properly, along with Latin and French and Russian, but despite her best efforts, Hermione still clearly had no inclination to do so.)

The latter approach resulted in the second visit from the Ministry of Magic, nearly eight months after the first, though not by the same team they had already encountered. The leader of Team One, a tall black man called Clarence who positively radiated sincerity, agreed that there was no point trying to take the girls' memories again, because they would inevitably re-discover their magic and resume their experiments. He explained the Statute of Secrecy and the need to keep magic from muggles, which the girls had already been doing (because Euros was ever-mindful of Emma's advice to let people underestimate oneself, and Hermione liked having secrets as much as any four-year-old). The team had departed with an air of satisfaction, probably under the impression that the girls would be good and not play with magic anymore in the future. Euros had, after all, very carefully given them that impression, though she had no intention of changing her behavior whatsoever, save keeping their exploits beneath the threshold of power which apparently alerted the Ministry's sensors.

She was successful for just over three months, which was when Hermione began reading The Sword in the Stone, with frequent interjections, corrections of pronunciation, and asides from Euros, who found fiction doubly boring when she wasn't even the one reading it. Perhaps due to the constant interruptions, the younger girl quickly decided that they should try turning one thing into another. Not one of them into a badger or hawk, like the book, because they had agreed to start small with their experiments, but, for example, a mouse into a chipmunk.

Convincing animals to trust her was almost as easy for Euros as snatching images out of Hermione's mind, though she had not experimented with it much after she had summoned a handful of birds to herself in the park and Hermione started calling her Princess Emily. A mouse was soon acquired and made to sit in the center of the room while Hermione looked doubtfully between it and the book on mammalian anatomy that Euros had been reading between her asides on Arthur and Merlin, and Euros looked for a good 'magic word' in the Greek dictionary.

"Can you do it?" the younger girl asked hesitantly.

"It was _your_ idea," Euros pointed out. "Why don't you want to do it?"

"What if I only turn it half-way and it dies?"

Euros considered for a moment. Regardless of the actual likelihood of that outcome, it wasn't as though Emma would find out about this, since neither she nor Hermione would tell her about anything to do with magic, so the _effective_ probability of this resulting in a death that _counted_ was zero. She shrugged. "I'll teach you how to dissect it, and we can see what parts changed first." Actually, she kind of hoped it _did_ die, because that sounded like an interesting afternoon, and there was no rule against dissecting something that was already dead. "Now, the word is _metavállo_ ; to transform into."

Hermione blinked at the mouse. The mouse blinked back, sitting obediently where Euros had left it. Hermione frowned, and there was a feeling that Euros now recognized as magic gathering in the air. It felt not unlike the atmosphere growing charged before a lightning strike.

The girl reached out a slightly-trembling finger and laid it on the mouse's head. " _Metavállo!_ " she whispered. The magic in the air rushed through her and into the mouse, which promptly exploded with a small pop.

Hermione, covered in atomized mouse, burst into tears even before Team One appeared with a crack. Euros laughed. She couldn't help it. Watching Hermione try so hard to be careful and thorough, only to have it backfire so _dramatically_ was the funniest thing she had seen since watching Sherlock try to find his little pet.

Everyone else was less amused. Juniper went to ensure that the elder Grangers registered no hint of anything amiss, while Maggie removed all traces of the mouse from the room and Hermione. She took her time, examining the books that they had left out and the spatter-patterns as she did so, then conferred with Clarence, who was soothing the still-sobbing Hermione. At a guess, Hermione was explaining what they had tried to do, because Clarence didn't look at all pleased.

It was Maggie who led Euros out of the room and sat her down on the sofa, taking the chair opposite for herself. Euros deduced that Juniper must have interrupted Emma and Dan in their bedroom.

"Okay," Maggie said, without preamble. "Here's the deal, Emily: I know we phrased it like a suggestion last time, but what we meant was _you need to stop playing around with magic_. Hopefully this little demonstration has shown you why: it's unstable, and dangerous for you to mess around with without adult supervision. It's even _more_ dangerous for you to push Hermione into trying things she's not ready for. She's _four_! Unguided transfiguration is exponentially more dangerous than unguided charms. What do you think would have happened if she had tried that on you, or herself? There's a reason we don't tell muggleborn children about magic before they're old enough for school, damn it!"

The important part of that tirade, Euros thought, was the mention of a school, and the idea that this experiment was somehow fundamentally different from those they had attempted before – transfiguration rather than charms. "School?" she repeated curiously.

"Hogwarts," the witch scowled. "They're supposed to send the Deputy Head to talk to prospective boarders the summer after you turn eleven, and explain your options, then."

Euros would be eleven in one year, two months and seventeen days. "If I turn eleven in August, does that mean the same summer, or the one after summer?"

Maggie rolled her eyes. "The same. Probably the last week of July. And don't think you can change the subject, missy!"

"Miss Price," Euros said, in her best imitation of Emma's most patronizing tone, "You seem to be under the impression that this experiment was _my_ idea."

"Are you telling me that a _four year old_ just thought she would try wandless animate to animate transfiguration on a whim?"

"No, I'm telling you we were reading a muggle story book about Merlin and she decided she wanted to try changing one animal into another, and I didn't see the harm in it."

"You _didn't see the harm_ -?! Bloody hell, McGonagall would kill me… look. Transfiguration, the art of changing one thing into another, is some of the most unstable and dangerous magic that is routinely taught in Magical Britain. You can't just try to brute force one shape into another – an explosion like the one you saw today is the _best_ possible outcome – I've seen backlash kill the caster, and other cases twist them irreversibly into still-living mockeries of themselves. I really don't know which is worse. It's not at all the sort of thing you should be encouraging a child to play with, muggle fae tales or no."

Euros glared. "Well, I would have _known_ that if you lot would actually _tell_ us anything, instead of just appearing and vanishing mysteriously as you please!"

"We told you to knock it off!"

"No, you told us, and I quote, 'Don't play with fire, kids, it can be dangerous.' And so we _stopped playing with fire_."

"Magic! Magic is the fire!"

Euros rolled her eyes and crossed her arms in an overt show of stubbornness. "Given that we were practicing pyrokinesis, your words were ambiguous."

Juniper sniggered from the doorway. "She's got you there, Mags. Slytherin for sure, this one."

"Damn it, June!" Maggie snapped, blushing.

"Slytherin?" Euros asked.

Juniper shook her head. "Can't say. We're not supposed to let you know we were even here, let alone tell you about the rest of the magical world. Wait until the Hogwarts letters show up. Their representative will answer all your questions."

Euros made a point of pouting at her. "Fine. If we're done here?" she asked Maggie pointedly.

The witch nodded with an expression of… rueful resignation, Euros thought that one was. A kind of 'I don't want to say yes, but I know I have no choice' face. She nodded back, and stalked back to the bedroom she shared with Hermione.

Her baby cousin was far more shaken by the whole exploding mouse experience than Euros really thought necessary, and as she admitted after the adults had left, had been given a similar talk on the dangers of what they were doing. She refused to continue their experiments for nearly six months, leaving Euros to practice on her own. This worked out relatively well, as no adults apparated in to yell at _her_ for her lack of control.

When Hermione did finally rejoin her in exploring their powers, it was in the wake of an indoor snow storm caused by her demands for a white Christmas. This was doubly unpleasant because it left their beds cold and wet, and because it had Maggie lecturing Euros again, this time about restricted arts, of which weatherworking was apparently one.

This did not stop Euros from creating increasingly complex thunderstorms and tornados in plastic bottles over the course of the six months that remained until her expected invitation to Hogwarts arrived, nor did the lecture that followed Hermione's exploration of gardening prevent her from learning how to cause plants to grow and wither on command.

The only AMRS call that was actually _Euros'_ fault was the one where she accidentally _compelled_ Justin Pinkerton to go play in traffic instead of bothering her cousin. He was lucky Hermione managed to make the first car hop over him, because there was no way it could have stopped in time. Euros was of the opinion she should have just let it hit him, because the AMRS only erased the jumping car from the witnesses' memories, and his telling everyone that she was the one who had made him walk out into the road did _nothing_ to improve the odd cousins' reputation at the daycare. (Thankfully, Emma hadn't believed that Euros had _made_ the kid do anything, even if she did reprimand her niece for telling anyone to bugger off so rudely.)

All in all, Euros thought the two years and three months between her arrival at the Grangers' and her invitation to Hogwarts passed rather pleasantly. She learned how to pass as a typical Holmes, if not a proper human. She practiced magic and the violin and half a dozen languages (which she eventually bullied Hermione into learning as well). She read every medical and philosophy book in the house before moving on to the public library and a more eclectic range of topics most accurately characterized as 'non-fiction with eye-catching covers,' not to mention a vast collection of fantasy and science fiction novels which she considered magical research, and Hermione considered the epitome of entertainment.

Violet and William (Euros' ex-step-mother and her husband) came to visit on major holidays, and Mycroft came checked in whenever his work brought him to Maidstone. On one very memorable occasion, the girls visited the manor, where Euros was shocked to find that Sherlock did not appear to recognize her at all. She couldn't tell whether he had been obliviated somehow, or was simply repressing everything to do with her after losing their little game, and something was missing from the way he looked at her, now. She spent the entire day with Hermione (who was by far a superior companion anyway, given their shared secret of magic), refusing to acknowledge him right back as Emma and Siger sniped at each other over tea cakes. Mycroft begged off with the excuse of work, the lucky bastard. There was a reason the visit was never replicated, and Euros refused to believe it was entirely her fault.

Dan and Emma slowly repaired their relationship, though Dan never did reconcile himself entirely to the presence of his niece in his house. They were, at best, civil to each other, but that seemed to be good enough for Emma, so it was good enough for Euros. Hermione continued to follow Euros around like a lost duckling, albeit a duckling that could make an eight-meter oak tree appear in their garden at a whim, and Euros slowly developed an insatiable urge to find out what happened next in her life: content as she was with the Grangers, she couldn't _wait_ to go to Hogwarts and learn all about Magical Britain as well.


	3. Serendipity

Severus Snape was not in a good state of mind for dealing with children when the Headmaster informed him that he would be required to visit this year's sole muggleborn, due to Minerva having a hairball or a transfiguration "emergency" or otherwise being indisposed (he hadn't quite gotten an explanation, and had decided it wasn't worth pursuing) and Severus being Dumbledore's go-to bitch (not in so many words, of course).

He really shouldn't have been out of bed.

He had a migraine, was emotionally exhausted, and thanks to an acute case of Lemnum Lethaeo withdrawal, had not slept for more than six collective hours in the past three days. He had spent the previous thirty-six hours hallucinating under a fever induced by the withdrawal from a cocktail of potions he had been using to manage the 'dreamless' sleep potion's side-effects, and had been subsisting largely on caffeine and sugar for that same period, due to an unfortunate tendency to retch up anything solid that he managed to choke down.

He had certainly worked under worse conditions of torture and deprivation when Bellatrix was at the peak of her paranoia against him, but there was a difference between 'functional enough to brew under pain of death' and 'capable of social niceties.'

He was beginning to re-think this whole 'coming to terms with grief and self-destructive habits' _thing_ , sparked by his finally reading Lily's journals the week before, but he had also thrown his stock of the addictive sleeping potion into the lake in a fit of decisiveness on Wednesday last. By the time he finished another batch, he would be through the worst of his symptoms. He hoped.

Dark Powers help him, the first thing he had thought when Dumbledore summoned him and explained the situation was, 'Fuck if I don't wish we had got that one, too,' because if the Death Eaters had managed to kill this particular muggleborn along with her peers, he would have been allowed to hide in the dungeons all day, rather than venturing out into the obnoxiously bright sunlight and attempting to hold down his coffee while explaining the existence of the magical world to a muggleborn twit and her undoubtedly hopelessly muggle family. Well, probably. With his luck, Dumbledore would have found some other chore for him to accomplish outside. But still! Who sends a former Death Eater as an envoy to a muggle family?

If his recent history with muggles was not enough, the fact that he had called the Headmaster a fucking lunatic on receiving his assignment should have exempted him from the job. He could not think of anyone else at the school who was _less_ likely to give a poor first impression of the magical world at the moment, including the mad old coot himself. But he had insisted, and Severus was obligated to follow his orders.

Unable to avoid it, he reported, as ordered, to the house in Kent, apparating under a notice-me-not charm to a perfectly muggle neighborhood, though thankfully not one of the cookie cutter ones that practically begged to be cleansed from the Earth with fiendfire. It was, he thought, an older, upper-middle-class area – the sort of place where professionals and their wives lived: doctors or lawyers, maybe. The front lawn of the house he had been directed to was slightly too long, and there was a single clean, well-kept car parked in the open garage, another clearly missing. The garage itself was tidily organized: shelves filled with neatly labeled plastic bins and cardboard boxes lined the back wall.

Severus felt rather out of place. His own experience of muggles – apart from Death Eater raids – was based in a much lower-class childhood. If he had been able to summon the mental energy, he might have cared.

He straightened the cuffs of the exceedingly plain, dark suit he had transfigured from one of his teaching robes and his memory of what the well-dressed men used to wear back when he still associated with muggles on a regular basis. Thankfully, muggle men's styles didn't change all that much over the course of a decade or so. He had done nothing to hide the bags under his eyes, but his face and hair were clean, and in his mind, that was more than Dumbledore had any right to ask of him on this particular Saturday, especially before noon.

With no viable excuse to prolong his hesitation (and mindful of the fact that the sooner this was done, the sooner he could go hide in the dungeons again), he strode briskly up the path to the front door and knocked impatiently, or tried to. A dark-haired child with wide, blue eyes and a carefully pleasant expression opened it before he managed the second rap. She appeared to be approximately the correct size for a first-year. The speed with which the door was opened was the only hint of her interest in his presence. A much smaller, curly-haired brunette peeked out from behind her, far more visibly excited.

"Miss Emily Holmes?" he verified tiredly.

She nodded. "Are you the Hogwarts representative? You don't look old enough to be the Deputy Head. Or sober enough." He glared at her. Her pleasant expression did not even twitch. "Sorry, was that rude? Um. Come in. _Aunt Emma_!" she shouted, stepping back to allow him entrance and taking the smaller girl (Sister? Cousin?) with her. He winced at the volume. " _I'm letting a stranger into the house!"_

"Surely there is a better way to have phrased that," Severus muttered.

"Mum doesn't know about wizards," the younger girl explained, confirming the cousin theory and leading the way into a sitting room.

"And yet you do," Severus noted drily.

The one he had come to inform of her invitation to Hogwarts explained, "For people ostensibly charged with enforcing the laws of Magical Britain, the Accidental Magic Reversal Squads aren't really that good at following them, especially when it comes to the Muggleborn Underage Magic Obliviation Protocol. I managed to convince Clarence that the policy is not only discriminatory, but also an entirely worthless endeavor, given that we would inevitably re-discover our magic and resume our experimentation, but without the advantage of knowledge gained from previous exploits." She shrugged, and gestured toward the sofa. "It wasn't even that hard."

Before Severus could ask about the exploits in question or figure out who 'Clarence' was, a muggle appeared from the depths of the house. She was perhaps five years older than Severus himself, and looked rather harried, her surface thoughts full of research on… teeth (Why _teeth?_ ) and blonde curls in disarray.

"Hello, Mr…"

"Professor Severus Snape," he introduced himself, then added with a half-suppressed sigh, "Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

The muggle's eyes narrowed. "Doctor Emma Granger, orthodontic surgeon, Granger and Granger Dentistry. Euros, what sort of game are you playing at, here?"

The girl, Emily Holmes by her own admission (though Severus rather thought Euros suited her), pouted for a moment. "It's not a _game_ , Aunt Emma. He really is a wizard. He's come to invite me to a magical boarding school and prove to you that I'm not crazy."

Emma Granger smirked at that. "I fail to see the connection between the two, dear."

Severus blinked. He didn't often feel that he was missing something, but he was certain he had just done so. Dark Powers, he needed more coffee.

Emily gave her aunt a blank-faced stare. "Not _that_. About the magic."

"It's true, mum! Magic's real! Watch!" the younger child demanded, pointing at the television clicker. " _Xesikothoún!_ " she commanded, and it rose shakily into the air. Severus' eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. Emma sat down very quickly.

"Stop showing off, Hermione," Emily said, nudging her cousin with an elbow and returning the clicker to the table with a wave of her hand. "This is _my_ school interview! You'll get your own when _you're_ eleven."

She added a short phrase in Russian, and the younger girl scampered off: _Go get the_ … something. Severus was more surprised that he recognized the language in his current, sleep-deprived state than that the girls apparently spoke it.

"English with guests, please, Euros," the dental surgeon corrected her niece absently, obviously still reeling from her daughter's feat of levitation.

"In point of fact," Severus interjected, shaking off his own shock and recalling that he did, indeed, have a job to do. "You've already been accepted, though if you would like to give your aunt a demonstration as well, I certainly won't stop you."

The girl shrugged and produced a candle from her pocket. After a few seconds' silent concentration, the wick burst into flame, due to, unless Severus was entirely mistaken, a very neat, very _focused_ wandless warming charm. _Impressive_.

He handed over her acceptance letter as the aunt stared at the candle flame. "Your father is going to be _furious_ ," she muttered finally. Severus caught a few stray thoughts which added up to an arson attempt, several years earlier. "Hand it over, Euros," she ordered, flicking her eyes to the letter in the Emily's hand.

Euros – Emily – _eh, fuck it, Euros it is_ – floated the pages across the room, rather than walking around the coffee table. There was a fine line between _impressive_ and _show off_ , and Severus rather thought that crossed it.

"A magical book list implies a magical book store," the child noted, perching eagerly on the edge of her seat. "Where is it?"

Severus rolled his eyes with a sigh. _So it begins…_ "There are several. The one I'm supposed to recommend is Flourish and Blotts, in Diagon Alley, London."

"Are you supposed to recommend it because the school has a deal with the owners, or because there are others that are less reputable?"

"Euros," Emma Granger said, still looking at the Hogwarts letter. "It's rude to ask about private business arrangements."

The girl gave an over-exaggerated sigh. " _Fine_. Which one would you recommend if you weren't _supposed_ to recommend the one?"

"Inkheart's," he answered after a moment's hesitation. His first thought was the Nameless Bookshop, but even he wouldn't send a muggleborn first-year into Knockturn. "Also in Diagon Alley. They have a broader selection, but they're slightly more expensive. Mab's Hollow in Dublin is comparable to F&B, but with more of a focus on esoterica. And then there's Du Lac and Sons up in Edinburgh. That's a branch of a French company, so they have better access to international titles, but the shop itself is smaller, so they almost always have to order whatever you want."

Emma Granger cleared her throat and asked, "Is there any additional information on this… Hogwarts? Literature or the like?" just as her daughter reappeared. She was carrying a black, spiral-bound notebook that Severus was certain spelt trouble.

Sure enough, once he handed the folder Minerva had prepared to the muggle, the girls monopolized his attention with questions they seemed to have listed after each of their encounters with the AMRS. These ranged from 'How does obliviation work?' to 'Who is You Know Who?' and 'Was there a war in Magical Britain about five to ten years ago? If so, why? How did it end?' to 'Why couldn't Clarence tell us all this?'

At some point between 'Why do grown-up wizards need wands?' and 'Why do wizards wear robes?' Emma fetched a pitcher of strong, sweet iced tea. The sugar went a short way toward reviving Severus, despite his pounding head. It was probably the only reason he made it through that final question, the answer to which was, "Because the Hogwarts Treaty reserves the right of introducing muggleborn children to Magical Britain for Hogwarts. It's an idiotic and outdated system, but Magical Britain is idiotic and outdated in general, so that's just par for the course."

The muggle snorted at that, before saying, "I've got one: Girls, how is it, exactly, that you already knew about… all this?"

Severus closed his eyes and tried to will his headache to abate while listening with half an ear to a story involving Tolkien, typical Ministry incompetence, an exploding mouse, and quite a lot of bickering. It didn't really work.

"Unfortunately," he interjected eventually, cutting off a lecture centering on Euros' responsibility to inform her aunt and uncle about people teleporting into the house and messing with their memories (no matter how absurd it sounded and how little they could do about it), "I must return to Hogwarts this evening." There was, he thought, no need to mention that returning to Hogwarts would take about ten seconds. "Do you have any other questions for me?"

It was, he thought, far more unfortunate than the prospect of escape that they did.

"Could you perhaps summarize the other educational options for a child in Magical Britain?" Emma asked, making a valiant attempt to enforce normality on the situation. "Euros has been homeschooled her entire life, and while that obviously won't do for the study of _magic_ -"

"I think we've done pretty well, so far," Hermione inserted with a genuine pout.

"Hush, dear. I worry that it might be a bit… overwhelming, to throw her directly into boarding school."

"I can handle it, Aunt Emma," the girl in question claimed, her expression hovering somewhere between excitement and determination.

Emma raised an eyebrow at her niece. "You told Justin Pinkerton to go play in traffic last month."

"He was being a git! I didn't think he would actually _do_ it!"

Severus raised an eyebrow, impressed despite himself. Accidental mind magic, including compulsions, was exceedingly rare.

"You've apparently been hiding the existence of magic from me for two years or more."

"It's the _law_ , Aunt Emma!"

"You were already hiding it before you knew that," the muggle argued calmly.

"We didn't know how to tell you," the younger girl defended her cousin, earning her a pat on the head from Euros, and a look that said 'you do not want to be involved in this conversation' from her mother.

"And don't think I didn't catch your deliberate disregard for the mouse Hermione blew up. I should consider that alone a violation of the Rules."

Euros glared at her aunt. "That was _ages_ ago, and I couldn't have predicted that would happen!"

"I think you could have predicted it was unsafe. Besides, you asked me last week if it was okay to vivisect the Kellers' dog. I suspect you just assumed the mouse was okay because you thought I wouldn't find out about it."

Something about the juxtaposition of the phrasing and the muggle's bland tone struck Severus as hysterically funny. His exhaustion might have had something to do with it. It took several seconds for him to register that a prospective student had just been accused of attempted vivisection by her guardian, by which point she had already pouted and changed the subject to avoid addressing the accusation of trying to flout 'the Rules,' presumably against animal cruelty.

("It wouldn't stop _barking._ And when you said 'no,' I didn't do it. _God!_ ")

He recalled belatedly the half-formed thoughts adding up to an arson attempt, and wondered whether there was some note in Euros' file to the effect that she was a budding psychopath.

("What _did_ you do?" Hermione asked hesitantly. "B'cause I haven't heard her barking lately…")

That _would_ explain why Dumbledore had chosen to make him do this visit, rather than Minerva. He had far more experience dealing with madmen (except Dumbledore himself, whom Minerva had known far longer) and far less experience with children. But then again, he rather doubted that Dumbledore would invite a psychopath to Hogwarts in the first place if he knew ahead of time, so perhaps not. He directed his attention back to the conversation before him with effort.

"I let it out of their yard and called animal control."

"Euros, that's _mean_ ," the little girl said, in obvious imitation of her mother.

It was also rather Slytherin, Severus thought. Though he did also note that there had been absolutely no denial of the vivisection accusation. And the fact that even the little girl found nothing odd about the scenario suggested that this sort of behavior was ongoing and openly recognized within the household. Even compensated for, perhaps. Interesting. But how should he interpret the fact that they were openly discussing it in front of an outsider, ie: himself?

"Meaner than leaving a dog barking in the yard all day? If they really want it back, it's not like it will be hard to track it down at the pound."

Emma cleared her throat again. "We will talk about this later, Euros." The girl grumbled something that might have been an assent before subsiding into a sulk. "As you may have gathered, Professor Snape, my niece… does not play well with others."

Well, he approved of her use of understatement, at least. Perhaps predictably, given his ambivalent relationship with the Headmaster, the fact that he suspected Dumbledore would not approve of this child made him want to bring her to Hogwarts all the more.

"Many of our students are homeschooled until they come to Hogwarts," he offered, deliberately pitching the school as though the previous exchange was of no consequence at all. "We professors are accustomed to dealing with the adjustment period the transition process entails. There are several smaller day-schools in England, if you would like to explore that option, though it would require almost the same degree of adjustment to the more… _socially demanding_ environment."

The muggle seemed somewhat thrown by his unflappable acceptance. "The other concern is, well… Euros is rather bright. She finds it very tedious to work at a similar pace to others her age. Were we to enroll her in a traditional school, she almost certainly could test out of her A-levels today – that is, into post-secondary –"

"I am familiar with A-levels, doctor," Severus cut her off. Now that she mentioned it, it was clear that the child did not speak or, from her questions, _think_ like an ordinary eleven-year-old. Come to think of it, the younger child, perhaps five, acted more like the average first-year. Intelligence must run in the family. He felt a bit stupid for overlooking it, but then, he wasn't anywhere near top form himself at the moment, and therefore quite disinclined to examine the mouth of the gift horse which was _not_ having to deal with dunderheads today.

She nodded. "Quite. Well, that being the case, you see why I would be hesitant to restrict her to the pace of her nominal peers. I do understand the concern and the need for training, but idle hands and all that. Are there perhaps… independent tutors we might contact?"

Unfortunately, he _did_ see why she would be hesitant to allow her niece to become too bored with her classes, even if she wasn't exaggerating the girl's intelligence. He had himself chafed at the pace of Hogwarts classes, which was geared toward the lowest common denominator, and he had had Lily and the Marauders to distract him. Regardless of how much he wanted to see the look on the Headmaster's face when he realized that he had another potential Dark Lady in his school, it would probably be for the best if he passed her along. She would, after all, most likely be sorted into Slytherin, and the last thing he needed just now was an intra-House blood-politics conflict.

"Most private tutors, I'm sorry to say, would not deign to give your niece the time of day, even if you could afford their fees, which are rather absurd: they target the wealthy elite of our society almost exclusively."

"I… see," the muggle said drily. "I hope there is a ' _but_ ' coming, Professor Snape."

He smirked. " _But_ , if Miss Holmes is as brilliant as you say, you may find someone who is willing to make an exception. If I may?" He looked from the muggle to the prospective student, raising a questioning eyebrow.

It was the girl who answered. "If you may what?"

"I can conduct a simple assessment of your talents and from there give you a list of prospective tutors who may be willing to overlook certain… financial concerns." _And personality disorders_ , he added silently. That alone would narrow the list considerably, regardless of the child's intelligence, since his first two choices to overlook that as well as her financial background and blood status (Bartemius Crouch Jr. and Astrid Wilkes) were in Azkaban and dead, respectively. Narcissa might do it, if she was bright enough. Muggleborn or not, a brilliant, psychopathic young witch was certain to remind her of Bellatrix as she once was, especially with that coloring. If not, well… old Slughorn would doubtless know someone.

She looked to her aunt, who shrugged, then back to him. "Uh… sure?"

He gave her no opportunity to reconsider, catching her eye and projecting himself into her mental 'space' immediately.


	4. Potential

Legilimency, especially on those who had not begun developing a self-aware 'mindscape' to temper their natural thought patterns, was always a bit strange, from the perspective of the legilimens.

Severus' first impression of Euros' mind was of standing on the edge of a whirlwind filled with flashes of light or color: a maelstrom of thoughts and observations. Like those of most people untrained in Occlumency, the girl's mind was undifferentiated, with little conscious thought given to how it _should_ be ordered to work most efficiently or allow her to conceal thoughts, or simply to allow her to more easily access and manipulate her own memories.

Severus made a point of keeping abreast of the latest research in the field – not that there was much, and even less which applied to the experience of a natural legilimens, who made contact with other minds through instinctive freeform magic rather than charms. He was aware of the latest studies conceptualizing the mind-space as a concentration-field which the legilimens 'tuned' some aspect of their own mind or magic to resonate with, and he found the idea described his experience perhaps more accurately than the traditional 'mindscape' paradigm. But he also understood how that paradigm had come to be so widespread.

It was simply easier to describe the experience of examining memories through the use of a complicated metaphor like the mindscape than to attempt to examine the process directly, especially when that was already how so many wizards envisioned their own minds. Within their mental space, their perception became a legilimens' reality, to a certain extent. Certainly their own perceptions of their minds influenced the way Severus perceived them.

But in truth, entering a 'mind-space' was not at all like stepping into some 'inner world.' It wasn't so much like seeing or hearing or feeling in the usual sense as it was like getting lost in one's thoughts, but at a distance. Of course, with a slightly different twist of focus, it _was_ possible to shift one's attention and see and hear and feel using the target's senses, but that was a different exercise entirely from skimming active surface thoughts or examining deeper memories.

Severus preferred the term _kenning_ to describe that uniquely peculiar sensation of being aware of another's thoughts and the way they moved, one leading to the next as new stimuli registered and new memories formed, fuzzing in and out of the target's consciousness, building connections to other thoughts and memories of moments that were in some way similar.

He knew that he was not really 'seeing' color or light or a whirlwind at all – that was simply the closest approximation he could make to any non-magical sense in order to consciously and logically process the state he was witnessing.

In any case, the girl's mind was not so different from most undifferentiated minds he had touched over the years, at least in its general form. The _speed_ of the thoughts and assimilation of new information was far more striking. He wasn't sure he had ever touched a mind that naturally moved so quickly. And even more surprisingly, she had clearly noticed his presence.

It was a matter of a split-second before he was, somewhat to his disbelief, isolated by a pattern of thoughts and memories which held the 'untethered' quality he recognized as belonging to a dream or imagined scene. He found his consciousness enclosed in a plainly furnished, institutionally beige room, which he suspected was based on a real place, simply because several imperfections had been reproduced – cracks in the corners of the ceiling, and a water stain beneath the sill of the weathered-looking window. There was a wailing as though of sirens or mourners fading in and out from no particular source, and a weak 'force' buffeting at him and urging him toward the door as the girl tried to push him out of her mind.

It was a shockingly competent attempt. Not very strong, but at least as sophisticated in its concepts as the basic Occlumency the older and more paranoid pureblood families insisted their children learn before Hogwarts, despite the fact that she clearly had no training in the subject.

_A natural occlumens._

Well.

That changed things.

He opened the door experimentally, only to find a corridor painted with that bilious shade of muggle green which had been so inexplicably popular in the '60s. Yellowing linoleum and a drop ceiling with fluorescent lights buzzing overhead completed the unpleasant view.

He suspected that if he began walking, he would either end up lost in an endless, shifting maze, or else find that the only other doorway led out of her mind. In any case, he would not be playing along. It was a matter of propriety to use an avatar, maintaining enough 'distance' from the host mind that the target would be aware of his presence if they had the slightest ability to perceive mind magic. It certainly wasn't necessary. He unraveled the 'physicality' of his form with a thought, attuning his mind to hers slightly more thoroughly and envisioning his presence as becoming 'intangible' to her.

He ghosted straight through the back wall of the room and out of the scene, enjoying the sensation of frustration that condensed around him as she realized she could not hold him so easily, and returned to contemplating the shape of her mind.

The maelstrom of her raw observations was, ironically, a better defense than the institutional hellscape. For most it would not be, but her thoughts simply moved so _quickly_ that it would be impossible for nearly anyone to keep up with them, assimilating new stimuli and connecting them to each other, dragging new information and inferences out of the connections almost as quickly as she observed new things, new knowledge appearing so rapidly she hardly had to ask herself a question most of the time before it was answered.

That alone was enough to confirm her intelligence: she was most certainly every bit the genius Emma had implied, and would most likely learn anything anyone chose to teach her (or allowed her to observe) with near-alarming facility. The other aspects which would be important to narrow the field of potential tutors were her magical ability and her personality – it would be thoroughly remiss of him not to investigate his suspicions of psychopathy directly, while he was here.

He could already feel her trying to find a new way to isolate him.

Severus let a teasing, amused sensation emanate from his consciousness to hers, which only frustrated her further, before using Occlumency to divide his own attention into half a dozen parts.

There were certain spells for which it was necessary to maintain an awareness of multiple aspects at once. Any sort of wards which gathered information, for example, and arguably legilimency itself: he was 'connected' to his own body, still, even if it felt as though his consciousness had been entirely projected into the girl's mind. Intentionally employing the technique within her mind-space effectively duplicated his points of reference as he divided his focus. There was still a hard limit to the amount of information he could process at any given moment, and it was, in fact, much harder to think clearly while also maintaining his divided focus, but with a little effort, he could _observe_ from multiple 'places' at once and gather data to analyze later.

It was a most effective way to learn the patterns of a new mind's thoughts, and as an added bonus, would make it six times as difficult for her to pin him down.

He 'stepped into' the whirlwind and let it pull him apart, following a different thought with each fragment of his consciousness, tracking the way they moved, connections building, pulling the thought closer to the 'center' of the storm, stretching and twisting to reach out to innumerable other thoughts and observations, becoming a point of memory in a vast, organically shifting shape which could not be described with any geometry he knew, though he could trace the patterns of its sides and edges well enough.

He explored them with one fragment of his focus (still gathering information on the patterns of her mental processes and more 'visibly' distracting her with the others), quickly confirming his suspicions of her personality: her memory-structure lacked most of the visceral emotional links that he was accustomed to finding in other minds. The emotions with a more mental component – frustration, confusion, fascination, and so on – were prominent enough to be easily distinguished, but the usual connections of love, guilt, and sorrow were missing.

This was not entirely unfamiliar to Severus. There were more psychopaths (and sociopaths) among the Death Eaters than in most segments of society, after all, and he had honed his skills by practicing on his fellow soldiers. He had never seen it in so young a child – he had rarely used Occlumency on children in general, in fact, after he had gained control of his legilimency in his fourth year – but he had no doubt that what he was seeing was, in fact, consistent with his earlier, off the cuff assessment.

In any case, it did not unduly affect his ability to navigate between memories, despite the lack of certain memory-links, but as he had suspected, it would have to be a consideration in his recommendation. In fact, between that and her status as an incipient legilimens, he suspected the list would be rather short, even given her obvious intelligence. Making a decision while his mind was so scattered would be foolhardy in the extreme, as he could not properly consider all the variables at the moment, but he thought there would probably be only a handful of candidates to decide between.

He found the dimension of linear experience and followed the connections back along it, skimming over the surface of the memories themselves until he recognized the same room and hallways with which she had tried to imprison him: a psychological hospital. All the memories of that period were painted with frustration so strong it might almost be called rage and helpless confusion, and linked directly to a set of actions several months prior – a shortcut-bridge through/across the time between them. He followed it out of curiosity.

A game.

A murder.

Tinged with disappointment, not for the death of the boy she had drowned (checking on him every day to see whether her brother had lost yet), but because she had wanted her brother ( _Sherlock – what kind of muggles name their child_ _Sherlock_ _? Bloody toffs_ ) to succeed – to engage with her and prove himself a worthy opponent. He had failed.

Frustration that her plan had failed: backfired, in fact.

Burning pictures and drawings of the dead boy in an effort to erase his memory from the house.

The fire burning out of control, destroying her bedroom and that whole wing of the manor.

Her step-mother insisting that she was out to get them – that Sherlock was right, she _had_ done something to that poor boy – that she was a little monster.

Her father speaking on the phone: _"She needs help, Vi. I'm worried about her…"_

That was enough. Severus returned to the hospital to seek out the circumstances of her release: Protesting her confinement with everything she had for weeks on end (hunger-exhaustion-helplessness-confusion-frustration); Emma Granger: _"Acting like a feral animal is most definitely not going to get you out of here, Euros; you have to act human, or at the very least like Sherlock"_ ; the doctors' suspicion at her sudden reversion to model behavior (a child psychologist, years before, asking her how she felt, giving her the 'right' answers when all she felt was very, very confused; Sherlock – her basis for 'normal' children's behavior; hope-determination-frustration-helplessness); the diagnosis ( _betrayal_ , Severus noted, though Euros had not identified the feeling; frustration-confusion-helplessness-hope: ' _perhaps I didn't do it right?'_ ); her father's reaction, believing the doctors over her (the same emotions again, without the hope); a long period of helplessness-confusion-frustration and overwhelming _boredom_ where it seemed like she would never be allowed to leave the institution, no matter what she did, and life seemed hardly worth living; and then… Emma again, giving her 'ground rules' (modifications of those rules and times she had flouted them; lessons on how to act human); Emma's husband, his eyes filled with mistrust (Emma identifying the expression for her on the face of a stranger at a shopping mall); Hermione, following her constantly, with all the devotion that Sherlock had never had (Hermione; Sherlock; another, older brother, whose name Severus did not track down), inspiring self-satisfied smugness in the older girl and a possessive satisfaction she had never known before: her brother had never accepted that he _belonged_ to her in the same way her cousin did so naturally.

Her time with the Grangers was peaceful in comparison to that in the institution, with few periods of what Severus might term 'emotional upheaval.' He sped through her memories of learning to recognize patterns of behavior and expression and body language; of exploring new languages and pushing her cousin into learning them as well, shaping her into an ever-more-ideal companion; of magical and mundane experiments. It appeared that while Euros' control was uncannily developed for an eleven-year-old, her magical strength was generally lacking. If she had not both been present when Hermione had had her first major bout of accidental magic and resisted obliviation, he thought it was highly unlikely that she would ever have been registered as a witch at all. This might be a slight detriment to finding her a decent tutor, but Severus did not doubt that with a wand to focus and amplify the effects of her magic, she would be more than competent with mainstream spells as well as mind magic.

His final assessment made, he returned to the girls' discovery of magic and their series of encounters with the Accidental Magic Reversal Squads, probing to discover what she had known of Magical Britain before his arrival. He concluded that most of it had been implied by her questions, though it was even clearer from this perspective that Team Three had royally buggered that first meeting than it had been from Euros' recounting of it for Emma. In fact, that failed attempt at a legilimency-guided obliviation probably explained both why another team had been assigned to deal with the girls afterward, and why they had not attempted further obliviations of either girl.

It also likely explained why Severus had been assigned the task of introducing Euros to magic (officially), he realized, abandoning his additional focal points as he concentrated on this idea. There might not be a psychopath note in her file (which idea had been mostly facetious, anyway), but there was almost certainly one which read 'natural occlumens; latent legilimens,' and Minerva was pants at mind magic. It wouldn't do to have the Deputy Headmistress embarrass the school in front of a prospective student, if it turned out that the shock of being properly introduced to magic (and finding out that there was, in fact, a whole world of magic, which had been hidden from her for years) was enough to cause an episode of accidental mind magic. A valid concern, perhaps, given that he had seen hints in her memories of intentional use of compulsion on both animals and muggles, and she had been using casual legilimency to read her cousin's surface thoughts for years. There was no doubt in his mind that she would one day be a fully-fledged legilimens, even if she was not yet properly 'awakened.'

Then again: Dumbledore couldn't actually _know_ that. Severus _highly_ doubted that the AMRS obliviator had managed to examine any of her memories while he was busy getting his metaphorical arse kicked by an untrained child. _Idiot_. And all of those memories had been formed after that first encounter. So he had to wonder whether there was some story behind the old man's paranoia, perhaps from his own tenure introducing new children to magic as the Deputy Head.

Not that Severus was complaining (anymore): submerging his mind into another's and tracing the patterns of her thoughts was restive in a meditative way. It also gave him some respite from the physical pain of his withdrawal migraine, and piggybacking on the breakneck pace of the girl's thoughts had been energizing in the same way as a strike of creative inspiration.

It was with a distinct pang of regret that he began to disengage from her mind. His mission was accomplished and he was well aware that from the outside, he would appear to be gazing creepily into the child's eyes with no explanation. It was only a matter of time until the connection was interrupted, which would be painful for both of them.

He winced as he withdrew to his own mind and body and full awareness of his migraine returned. The lights of the sitting room seemed suddenly harsher, worse for the reprieve, and his stomach was positively churning.

He distracted himself by considering the options moving forward: the girl was intelligent enough to earn the favor of any tutor he might suggest, but as he had already concluded, the realization that she was a legilimens meant the list of qualified instructors was depressingly short. He had been correct when he estimated that he knew of four or five individuals who might be interested and capable, given her intelligence, but of those, one was a mind healer, and would never train a mentally unstable legilimens; one specialized _only_ in mind magic, and was unsuitable as a general tutor; two worked for the Department of Mysteries and would be more likely to study her than teach her; and one would probably get her killed on a cursebreaking mission in some exotic location before her thirteenth birthday.

There was, he realized with a faint start, only one truly viable option, and it was not ideal.


	5. The Offer

"You disappeared, but you weren't gone," Euros observed, her tone faintly accusing. "How did you do that?"

"Practice," he answered succinctly. "Dr. Granger, may I speak to you in private for a moment?"

"I want to stay," the girl interjected before the woman could answer. "If it's about me, I have a right to know."

Emma raised a questioning brow at Severus. "I think that's fair."

He nodded reluctantly.

"I want to stay, _too_ ," Hermione whined.

Severus glared at her, and she quailed, but she wrapped herself around Euros and fixed begging eyes on her mother.

"No," the muggle said.

"But _mum_ …"

"I said 'no,'" Emma repeated. "Professor Snape asked for privacy. It is incumbent upon us as good hostesses to give it to him. Please go to your room. And no eavesdropping," she added, as the girl dragged her feet toward the door. "More tea?" she offered, either reminded of her own hostessing duties, or as an excuse to ensure that her daughter was not lurking in the hallway.

"Coffee, if you have it," he requested, then added belatedly, "Please."

"I'll put a pot on."

As soon as she left the room, Euros fixed Severus with a piercing stare. After a few seconds, she spoke: "Anything you want to say to Aunt Emma in private, you can say to me directly, you know."

"I could," he agreed. "But she is your guardian, and the solution I am about to propose is going to seem somewhat self-serving, I suspect, especially as I am your only official contact within Magical Britain. I could lie to you to serve my own ends, and you would not know until it was far too late."

She smirked. "You seem awfully sure of yourself. I always know when people are lying to me."

Severus snorted. "You mean like when I say the sky is blue?" he said, projecting deception into the mental non-space between them, then occluded again, as was his habit. "Or when I say I was born on Mars?"

She frowned. "How did you do that?"

"Again, practice," he drawled, then relented. "It's called _occlusion_ , the art of keeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself. Most people don't. They project half-formed 'surface thoughts' and incoherent emotions around themselves all the time. Occasionally they'll project more coherent thoughts, like when your aunt saw you light that candle and thought of the fire you caused before they had you committed."

"You saw that?"

"Seeing isn't the right word, really, but yes," he admitted.

"And… before? And after?" she seemed uncertain.

He smiled. It was not a kind expression. He wondered if she knew the distinction. "Yes."

"And… you're still going to offer to be my tutor?"

He shrugged. "I've no room to judge. You'll learn that soon enough." He noticed he was rubbing his burn-scarred Dark Mark through his sleeve, and stopped.

"And… they let you teach children?" Euros asked, in the same tone she used for 'you're still going to offer to be my tutor?' – as though something didn't quite seem to add up about her observation.

Admittedly, Severus himself was slightly baffled about this one: he was more than halfway convinced that Dumbledore had appointed him Head of Slytherin as an obscure statement on how little he cared for the students of that House. He knew he was appointed Potions Instructor because the Headmaster wanted to keep an eye on him, and remained there because no one was really sure what side he was on: a permanent position doing a job he blatantly loathed was considered a sufficiently ambiguous 'reward' for his actions in the war that no one seemed to be too invested in seeing him removed.

"It's complicated," he shrugged. The politics of his current position were certainly too complex to explain before Emma returned with coffee. Besides, discussing his predicament would only make his migraine worse.

The girl nodded. "We have another minute or two, depending on whether she goes to check that Mine's in her room before she comes back. Can you teach me how to do that? It was _legilimens_ , wasn't it? But you didn't use a wand."

"No, I didn't use a wand, and no, it wasn't quite like the spell that moron used on you. I'm what they call a natural legilimens, which means I don't need the spell to create a connection between my mind and someone else's. And yes, I can teach you how to do the same. That is, in fact, the main reason I am offering to tutor you. Natural legilimens are rare. I know of less than a dozen of us in Magical Britain, including yourself. Several are too stupid to even consider asking _them_ to teach _you_. One would refuse on moral grounds; two would be more interested in studying you than teaching you; one is unsuited to teaching anything _other_ than mind magic; and O'Rourke's occupation is not exactly conducive to living a long and healthy life, let alone the taking on of an apprentice. Which just leaves… me."

"You don't sound too pleased about that," Emma said, moving from the doorway back to her chair, passing him a mug of coffee as she passed. He reprimanded himself for not noticing her return, and wondered how long she had been standing there.

He hesitated, then took a gamble on honesty. "I'm not. My contract with Hogwarts allows for up to two apprentices, but the current Headmaster has made it clear that he does not approve of that system. Taking on an apprentice would win me no favor with him, and we are already at odds. There are no other apprentices at Hogwarts, which would place you, Miss Holmes, in a unique and potentially unpleasant position with the student body, the rest of the staff, and the Headmaster.

"Apprentices are expected to already have a basic educational foundation and a strong foundation in their apprenticeship subject and thereby be able to help their Master with menial tasks and serve as a sort of teaching assistant, to ameliorate some of the additional work-load associated with their advanced education. Obviously I could not ask Miss Holmes to complete any such tasks for several years, thus I would be taking on a serious time commitment, with relatively little compensation for the immediate future.

"And I am the Head of Slytherin House, which is full of competitive, conniving children who will challenge the necessity of their abiding by the rules of their House, given that you would be exempted from that system, and my authority as their Head of House for having taken an apprentice from outside of it."

"But you're still going to offer," Euros observed. He nodded. "Why?"

He shrugged. "There is no one else, really. I _could_ put you in touch with O'Rourke, if you'd like a second opinion. I think she's even in Ireland right now. But I can tell you with about ninety-eight percent certainty that any names she comes back with will turn you away as being too dark, and therefore too dangerous to teach."

"Dark?" Emma asked.

Severus made an ambiguous hand-gesture. "Inclined toward the conventionally negative end of the emotional spectrum. Selfish, angry, antisocial…"

The muggle's eyes narrowed suspiciously. Before she could say anything, however, Euros intervened: "Yes, he knows. No, he doesn't seem to care."

"How _much_ does he know?" the woman asked, her tone matching her gaze.

"Approximately…? Um… everything."

"And… he's still offering to be your tutor?" It was clear where the girl had picked up that particular note of 'something doesn't add up,' Severus observed.

"Yes," he interrupted. Euros shrugged and nodded.

He could have elaborated on the fact that a precocious, dark-inclined legilimens – or even _latent_ legilimens – would remind people of the Dark Lord (quite frankly, she reminded _Severus_ of the Dark Lord – if she had been more powerful, he might have found himself wondering if the Dark Lord and Bellatrix had somehow managed to spawn without anyone noticing); that they would fear her, and it was to her advantage to learn to control herself early on, for that reason as well as the practical: uncontrolled legilimency could drive one mad.

He didn't. He suspected that Euros wouldn't care, and Emma was clearly looking for a benefit to him that outweighed the costs he had just listed.

He could have explained that aligning himself with a student with Euros' degree of talent, becoming known as her master, would help him build a reputation other than 'spy,' and that as she gained power and influence, he would as well.

But though that was true, it was hardly a consideration. If anything, using a child for her potential connections repelled him: he hated feeling like the fat old bastard who had been his Head of House.

Instead he drawled nonchalantly: "Have you _any_ idea how _tedious_ it is, teaching the average eleven-year-old every day, year after year? The temptation of training a student with whom I could have a decent conversation is enough to repay the effort, I assure you."

Euros froze for a moment, genuinely surprised by that reasoning, if he was any judge, though not, he thought, displeased. He caught a flicker of curiosity from her, wondering, most likely, if _he_ would be a half-decent conversational partner for _her_. He rather thought so. She assimilated new information at least an order of magnitude more comprehensively than he, but he was quite capable of keeping up with the pace of her inferences. Plus he could always cheat, and use legilimency to ensure that he noticed the same details she considered important in any given conversation.

Emma examined him skeptically, no doubt taking in the fact that he resembled death warmed over. He resisted the urge to snap at her that if he could keep up this conversation with a migraine on three days of practically no sleep, he was perfectly capable of keeping up any other conversation in less extenuating circumstances. The coffee was helping him to feel more functional, easing the pounding in his head ever so slightly, but the caffeine was making his hands shake. She likely thought him going through alcohol withdrawal. Ironic, really, as he avoided drinking to excess as a rule. Not that his self-medication was much healthier, really, but at least it had left him fully functional despite his grieving and the trauma he had suffered the war.

"Your qualifications?" she asked after a long moment.

Severus sighed. This would require some explanation. "The highest qualification in magical academia is Mastery of a subject. It signifies that the holder has a comprehensive understanding of the field, and has contributed new information to it, not unlike a muggle doctorate. It also serves as a de-facto teaching degree, as a Master is expected to have the knowledge necessary to train Apprentices and supervise Journeymen – not that the later title is often used in Magical Britain outside of Healing and Enchanting.

"There are fifteen Masteries recognized in Magical Britain: Healing, Enchanting, Arithmancy, Defensive Magic, Charms, Transfiguration, Magizoology, Runic Magic, Potions, Herbology, Astronomy, Alchemy, Spellcrafting, History, and Magical Theory, in order of popularity. Several others are recognized on the continent, but not in Magical Britain: Dark Arts, Light Arts, Ritual Magic, Offensive or Battle Magic, and Mind Arts, for example. There are also several career specializations which are regarded with a similar degree of recognition as official masteries: a Healing mastery with an emphasis in Mind Healing is the closest we have to an official Mastery of Mind Arts; Auror training is considered equivalent to a mastery in Defensive Magic; Hit Wizard training is equivalent to a mastery in Offensive Magic on the continent; Cursebreaking is often equated to an applied Mastery of Runic Magic; and so on." He stopped, as he realized he was beginning to ramble: the inevitable effect of too much caffeine and too little sleep.

"Go on," Emma prompted him.

"I am employed at Hogwarts on the strength of my Potions Mastery, which I achieved in 1980, eighteen months after my NEWTs, building on independent research I began during my Hogwarts years. That is the capacity in which I am permitted to take on an apprentice, though there is no real limitation on what a Master may teach their apprentices. I received a Mastery in Dark Arts and Defense from an American university in 1982 by publishing on several curses, countercurses, and potions I developed during the War. That is unfortunately not recognized in Magical Britain. On the continent it qualifies variously as a Mastery of Defensive Magic, Offensive Magic, Spellcrafting, or Dark Arts, depending on the country. In truth, it is closest to the latter, though I have the battle experience to support the former, as well."

"And you're teaching at the equivalent of a secondary school?" the muggle asked wryly, as though expecting an elaborate justification.

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. This did absolutely nothing to relieve the tension behind his eyes. "Magical Britain is small, and has no notable post-secondary educational institutions. Hogwarts tends to attract those teachers who are most serious about education. I am hardly the most overqualified professor at the school. Professor Sprout has masteries in Herbology, Potions, Healing, Light Arts, and Geomancy." Severus had been as surprised as anyone to realize this, but in retrospect, it was not entirely unexpected: Hufflepuffs did not believe in idleness. "Professor Flitwick has masteries in… Dueling, Offensive and Defensive Magic, Charms, Arithmancy, and Enchanting." There were also professors with no qualifications whatsoever, including Trelawney, Binns, and more than half of the Defense instructors, but Severus was not obligated to mention them. Nor did he care to.

"The NEWT is our equivalent of an A-level exam, and the basic requirement for an independent tutor in a given subject to the OWL level – an O-level. I achieved ten NEWTs in 1978 – six Outstanding and four Exceeds Expectations. Hardly record-breaking scores, but quite sufficient to qualify me as a general tutor in those subjects. In any case, they are all offered at Hogwarts, and as I am employed there, my apprentices are able to sit in on the other professors' lectures and practical lessons at any level I deem necessary, which would free Miss Holmes from the standardized curriculum, while still allowing her to take her OWLs and NEWTs in the full array of Hogwarts subjects."

The girl had acquired the informational folder – when had that happened? – and was flipping through it eagerly. "Are there classes on literature or science?" she asked. "Oh! What about anatomy?"

Severus smirked weakly, recalling Lily's victorious grin when they had finally made things up in the first week of their sixth year, and she announced her latest triumph. "Madam Pomfrey, our Healer, has been known to train the occasional student in the basics of her art, including anatomy. I'm sure something could be arranged. As for muggle subjects, there are no classes as such, but it is my understanding that Madam Pince, who attended Cambridge after graduating from Hogwarts, has organized a series of study groups for any students who wish to earn their muggle competencies."

Euros looked pleased, but Emma hummed noncommittally. "Your Mastery is in Potions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no matter what else you teach Euros, her apprenticeship and eventual Mastery would also be in Potions, would it not?" She was not wrong.

Severus nodded, and immediately regretted it, as the world spun wildly. "Officially."

"Officially," Emma repeated. "But… what reason is there for her to take that particular course, rather than, say… asking this Madam Pomfrey or Professor Sprout to apprentice her as a Healer?"

The wizard could not help a tiny snort of laughter escaping at the thought of Pomona or Poppy taking on the challenge of a psychopathic teenage legilimens, let alone one of Euros' intelligence. She would run rings around them without even trying. "Legilimency," he said succinctly. After a brief pause to renew his focus, he elaborated: "Any tutor you approached would be happy to apprentice Miss Holmes. I could give you twenty or thirty names of Masters in various fields who would not even blink at a little recreational animal sacrifice or fire-starting. Similarly, I could give you a dozen names of individuals I believe have mastered the Mind Arts sufficiently to help Miss Holmes learn to control those talents. Of those, perhaps five would overlook incipient psychopathy – though they would call it a 'naturally dark personality.' You arrived just as I was explaining to Miss Holmes why none of them would be suitable to supervise her general education."

"But you would. And you _just so happen_ to be the man assigned to introduce our family to the magical world."

Severus shrugged, suddenly too exhausted for words. His queasiness returned in full force. He should have refused the coffee: it was sitting poorly on his empty stomach. With great effort, he managed to approximate his previous tone: "I would say it was a coincidence, but in truth I was likely chosen rather than the Deputy Headmistress because my employer knows that Miss Holmes has some talent for the Mind Arts, and I am Hogwarts' resident expert. There _might_ be a suitable tutor in France or Prague, but, well…"

"Well _what_?" Euros asked irritably.

"I was under the impression your aunt wanted you to grow up to be a half-decent person," he told her bluntly. "The primary expectation when potential tutors hear 'magically precocious, highly intelligent, dark-inclined natural Occlumens and Legilimens' will be that you are destined to become the next Morgana. Most will want to either kill you before you can become a threat, or break you or tempt you and turn you into a tool for their own ends."

The muggle's eyes narrowed, all protectiveness for her all-but-adopted niece. "But you won't?"

"No," he said simply, unwilling to elaborate.

"No?" she repeated skeptically.

" _No_ ," he affirmed, slightly more vehemently, wondering if he could excuse himself to the loo, or ask for a glass of water, or something.

She made that noncommittal hum again. _I don't know if I believe you_ , it said. "I think I should tell you what I see when I look at you," she murmured, almost too softly for him to hear. "Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I see a young man who has _no one_. You are all alone in the world, Severus Snape, _Professor_ Snape. You are as isolated as any Holmes – more so, perhaps, because you are an idealist. You fought for the dark in your war, did you not? The side that lost? And yet you do not speak so harshly of the dark itself as you do of your Dark Lord and your Leader of the Light. I think you still follow that ideology, even though you have somehow convinced the other side to take you in. You have survived, yes, but you have surrounded yourself with people who can never understand you and who will not even try."

The man in question said nothing. She was not wrong, and even if she had been, he wasn't sure it was a smart choice to open his mouth at the moment. Not only was he feeling quite ill, but she seemed to be doing the work of outlining a suitable motivation for him.

"I see a proud young man, who has the potential to be a great teacher but no desire to do so. You would rather do your own research than answer the questions of children and teach them the basics, day in and day out. And yet you cannot quite shake the urge to do so, when they ask. I see a young man who cares more than he would like to admit: both resentful and proud of the children who are his responsibility, and protective of them, perhaps for no better reason than they remind you, just a bit, of yourself. I see a young man who _could_ lie to me, if he wanted to, but who _doesn't_ want to, because you want more than anything else for someone to _see_ you and _know_ that you are more than the tangle of deceptions and assumptions and old loyalties and _politics_ that you have woven around yourself and had imposed upon you."

Severus was not really sure how he had managed to give so much away. It surely had something to do with the fact that he wasn't at all well. He was quite certain he was not normally so transparent as to be readily dissected by a bloody muggle without so much as a hint of legilimency. But her inferences: ' _You want someone to see you'_ – _bah._

He let her words continue to roll over him as he concentrated on quelling the churning of his stomach.

"I see a young man who has done so much in his life already – so many things, some of them terrible – but who regrets none of it. No one is so sure of himself as you if they believe they have made a major, life-changing mistake somewhere along the line. If you had to choose again, you would do everything exactly the same, wouldn't you? But you're clearly struggling, still, years after the war is over, to come to terms with something… someone, I expect, that you lost along the way. It's clear in the way you talk about it that it's not quite over for you. And it's equally clear that you're trying to move on. You wouldn't be here if you weren't: you'd be drunk in a corner pub somewhere, or drugged out of your mind, probably on some home-made concoction, since I don't take you for the type who trusts others when you can do for yourself, and what is the conjunction of Dark Arts and Potions if not poisons and drugs?"

Well, that was… accurate. Bugger all – how had he managed to so thoroughly overlook her, sitting so quietly and reading the literature as though in shock? Clearly she hadn't been – more like letting him think she was not paying attention as he interacted with the girls, gathering data as he answered their endless questions…

His head was swimming.

"This is what I see: a young man who does not know what to do with himself in a time of peace, because he grew up in a time of war. A man who is looking for a cause, or a project: some reason to take a stand and stop simply going along with whatever he has been told to do by his savior/jailor these past several years. A sense of purpose to shake off the lack of motivation that has plagued him since the war ended. And you want my niece to be this purpose, likely because you see yourself in her: the young witch who shares your rare gift of mind-reading and a penchant for darkness that you can relate to and speaks and thinks far beyond her years, as you once did, and whom you suspect will be every bit as lost and isolated in your world as you have been."

"Aunt Emma?" Euros tried to interrupt.

Severus agreed: he couldn't do this anymore. He was going to be ill. Gods and Powers - he was feeling downright _faint_.

Emma ignored her niece, and for all her observational prowess, seemed not to realize that Severus was in serious danger of vomiting on the obnoxiously abstract-patterned, jewel-toned rug that lay beneath the coffee table.

"Now _do_ correct me if I'm wrong, Severus Snape, because you were not wrong about me: I do want Euros to grow up to become a half-decent person, and you're asking me to hand over, in essence, not only her teaching, but her raising, to a nigh-perfect stranger: a man I have known for less than six hours, who is offering to spirit her away to another world entirely, where I and my fellow muggles cannot follow. He presents it as though he is doing us a favor – as though this is the only realistic option – and asks me to trust him not with my life, but with the life and future of a young girl who, whatever else she may be, is first and foremost my niece and my responsibility. And whether I do so depends entirely on whether I have judged him truly or not. So tell me, Severus… Am I wrong about you?"

Severus didn't know what the right answer was. He was hardly following the question. The room was spinning. Closing his eyes only made it _tilt_ as well.

_"Aunt Emma!"_

" _What_ , Euros?"

Severus tried to stand, to get to the kitchen or the loo or _anywhere_ that wasn't directly in front of the muggle and the girl he really _did_ want as an apprentice before vomiting. He immediately collapsed.

The last thing he heard before consciousness fled entirely was a young girl's flat voice saying, " _That_."


	6. Tentatively Accepted

Severus woke with a sudden start: not the adrenaline jolt of a reviving charm, but the all-natural, instinctive, fear-filled realization that he had no idea where he was. He kept his eyes closed. It was generally speaking best not to let one's captors know that one was conscious, if at all possible. Not that he had ever been captured by the enemy, but Bellatrix had driven the lesson home in the course of his training as a Death Eater in her inimitable way: waking up in an unfamiliar place almost certainly meant he had let his guard down and was about to be horribly tortured.

Except.

The war was over, and had been for over three years.

Bellatrix was in Azkaban and Severus… well, he had been under Dumbledore's control. What had…? _Oh_.

He finally caught up to himself, recalling the circumstances under which he had passed out and taking in what he could of his surroundings.

The sheets were rougher than his own, the pillows fluffier, and there was a smell of muggle antiseptic in the air. A hospital? There were two minds in the room with him – one very familiar, Euros Holmes, alert and amused – and one with a younger, softer shape, sleeping soundly – Hermione, most probably. His left arm itched where someone had inserted an intravenous needle and taped it in place, and there was a steady beeping in the background, though he could hardly hear it over an argument in the corridor.

Was that… Emma Granger?

"We told the doctors that you were walking around our neighborhood, and passed out right in front of our house," Euros said quietly.

Severus' heart rate spiked at being unexpectedly addressed, and with it the frequency of the beeping. Which would explain how she had known he was awake. It must have spiked when he regained consciousness as well. He opened his eyes.

"We're being good Samaritans and waiting until you wake up to go home. Or we were, until that wizard in the purple suit showed up and started obliviating people and making them not notice him. I don't think it matters, now."

Purple suit… " _Dumbledore's_ here?"

"Long beard, white hair, gold specs. About 185 centimeters. This is his," Euros added, holding up a very familiar wand.

Severus blinked at it. "How did you get Albus Dumbledore's wand?" For that matter, where was his _own_ wand? His holster had been removed along with his transfigured suit.

The girl giggled. "He forgot about effective range and got too close to Aunt Emma trying to obliviate her. She snatched it and gave it to me before he could make her give it back. He tried to take it back with magic, but Hermione stopped him." There was a distinct note of pride there, Severus thought. "And then Aunt Emma slapped him for trying to use magic on us, because and I quote, 'I don't know who you think you are, but you have no right to use magic on my girls.' She sent us in here, and they've been arguing for about half an hour, now."

"Oh." Severus didn't really know what to say to that. It struck him as fairly absurd that the 'most powerful wizard in Britain' had been disarmed – _and slapped_ – by a muggle, but then, Dumbledore and the Light always had underestimated muggles. And it wasn't as though he would fight back against one.

The door opened with a click, and there was an enraged shriek from Emma as she was evidently prevented from closing it. "Don't you dare!" she shouted. "Euros, you have my permission to set this bastard on fire if he tries anything!"

Dumbledore, now visible, glared at the woman he was holding in place with some wandless charm. "I do not enjoy using magic on muggles, madam, but you leave me no choice!" he declared self-righteously, before silencing her tirade against him.

Euros grinned and pointed the man's own wand at his chest. " _Fotia!_ " before Severus could say 'don't do it.' (Not that he tried.)

Dumbledore hastily conjured a wandless shield to absorb the heat of the flames, his eyes comically wide. (The girl appeared to be torn between excitement that her spell had worked so much more effectively than it did without a wand, and irritation that he hadn't caught fire.) "How?" the Headmaster asked, dumbstruck.

Severus cleared his throat.

"Severus, my boy!" the old man began, but the younger wizard cut him off.

"Let Dr. Granger go, Dumbledore," he said as firmly as he could while trapped in a muggle hospital bed. "Euros, please refrain from setting my boss on fire."

"Aunt Emma said he was your jailor," the girl pouted, just as the Headmaster said, "I'm not so sure that would be wise, my boy." He glared at the child as her words registered.

"It's complicated," Severus told her. "But regardless, the arrangement we discussed will be excluded as a viable alternative if you set him on fire."

She sighed. "Fine, but I'm keeping his wand. Just in case."

"My dear girl –"

" _Don't_ antagonize her, Dumbledore," Severus cut him off again. "And let her aunt go. Why are you even here?"

"Well, I was looking for you, my boy," the Headmaster said sharply, before releasing the muggle woman with a huff.

She stormed into the room, slamming the door behind her, clearly ready to resume her argument (beginning with a kick to the balls, which had a certain amusement value), but Severus deflected her ire with a wandless compulsion: "Emma, _calm down_."

" _Severus_ ," the old goat reprimanded him sharply as the irate mother froze on the spot and took a deep breath.

"Oh, what's that? Let the muggle who stole your wand beat you to a bloody pulp? If you insist…"

"Surely she wouldn't…" Dumbledore looked doubtfully at the now coldly furious woman.

"She would," the muggle in question assured him, along with Severus and Euros.

"…Ah," the old man subsided, finally.

"Now, Emma, if you would be so kind, please explain what the bloody fuck is going on here."

"I was –" Dumbledore began.

Severus raised an eyebrow at him in a tired impression of his usual disapproving expression. "I know you have a _lot_ of names, Headmaster, but unless I missed a memo at some point today, none of them are _Emma_. Dr. Granger, if you would?"

"Don't speak to me as though I am not every bit as irritated with you as I am with _him_!" she snapped. "You passed out and vomited on the rug. I called an ambulance and we brought you here… six hours ago, now. You were diagnosed with acute withdrawal from a truly staggering dependence on diazepam or some similar substance, which I note you did not see fit to mention at any point during our conversation!"

"It's not relevant!" Severus defended himself.

"I think I'll be the one to judge whether your addiction is relevant in the decision to hand my niece off you and your school, thank you very much!"

"It's _not_ relevant because I had _already decided to quit_! I wouldn't have been in withdrawal if –"

"As though an addict's opinion of his own state can be trusted!"

"Dark Powers take you! I'm not an addict! There is a _difference_ between chemical dependency and psychological addiction. The latter is not an issue, and I was more than halfway through the worst of the former! I am a fully qualified Potions Master, and I _do_ know what I'm doing when it comes to self-medication, damn it!"

The muggle snorted. "And doctors _never_ get addicted to prescription pain killers. Pull the other one."

Severus seethed as Dumbledore said hesitantly, "My boy? I had no idea you were suffering so – you should have said something. We could have gotten you help. Why, Poppy –"

"Poppy Pomfrey knows nothing about –" Severus began, but Emma talked over him: "You can just shut your bloody mouth and go stand in a corner or something! What kind of headmaster doesn't realize that a man in charge of a full quarter of his school – responsible for the wellbeing of _children_ – is dependent on drugs to do his job? Even if his current state is not the norm, surely that would have made the fact that he was in no fit state to represent your school _even more obvious_! You admitted when you arrived that you were the one who sent him to us today, so you _must_ have seen him – even when he arrived on our doorstep he looked hung over and strung out!"

"Madam Granger, I –"

"I said _shut up_!" the muggle glared. "You strut in here all high and mighty demanding to see your misplaced wizard, modifying memories right and left; refuse to listen when I try to tell you the state he's in; attempt to use magic on _me_ , when it is my understanding that I am fully within the bounds of your Statute of Secrecy; try to use magic on _my children_ , who are _definitely_ within the bounds of that bloody law – you've used up your three chances and _then some_!"

Severus spoke up before Dumbledore could, as Emma paused to catch her breath. "Headmaster, might I have a moment alone with Dr. Granger and Miss Holmes?"

The old man had the temerity to look offended. "Surely whatever you have to say, Severus, you can say in front of me."

Severus folded his arms over the pastel hospital robe the muggles had dressed him in, and fixed his employer not with a glare, but the flattest, most disbelieving _stare_ he could muster. "I'm not going to apparate out of this bed, Dumbledore. I am not avoiding you and have been following your orders to the letter all gods-cursed day. I would simply like a moment of privacy to attempt to repair the damage that has been done to the rapport between Dr. Granger and Miss Holmes and myself by this… unfortunate incident."

The old man looked as though he could not believe there was much 'rapport' to damage, but after a long hesitation, he assented. "Very well. I shall wait outside. I don't suppose I might have my wand back, in order to continue erasing our presence from this establishment?"

Euros looked to Emma, who hesitated.

"Oh, give it back to him," Severus rolled his eyes. "And give me mine, too, if you have it."

Emma nodded, and Euros smirked, pulling Severus' wand from her pocket and handing it over before tossing the Headmaster's to him from across the room. He caught it with a wandless summoning charm and stalked out of the room. Severus smirked, far more amused than he thought possible by the interaction he had just witnessed. It wasn't often that Dumbledore was forced to reckon with someone who did not respect him simply on the strength of his authority and reputation, and he could hardly go around forcing muggle parents to bend to his will if he wanted to continue thinking of himself as a paragon of the Light.

The door closed with a snap, and Severus quickly and silently performed a series of anti-eavesdropping charms. When he was finished, he added, with the utmost sincerity: "My apologies, Dr. Granger, both for the compulsion I used on you and for the situation in which we currently find ourselves." Her expression softened slightly. "I did not anticipate that my current infirmity would affect my ability to provide a reasonable introduction to Magical Britain. In my defense, I did not predict that I would be present in your home for more than an hour or two." She nearly smiled, thinking on the hours of questions her daughter and niece had put him through. "There are… extenuating circumstances which have recently been… partially resolved, which action precipitated my decision to forgo the potions regimen I have been maintaining over the past three years. I am entirely confident that by the time term begins in September, I will be fully recovered and able to take on Miss Holmes' apprenticeship, if you are amenable."

Euros shrugged and nodded, obviously unconcerned, but Emma's eyes narrowed. "Apology tentatively accepted, Professor Snape. As for the issue of Euros' apprenticeship, well… that depends. Do you recall the topic of discussion prior to your little fainting episode?" she asked snidely, apparently picking up where they had left off in their negotiations with no time wasted on useless pity. He smiled faintly. He did like a ruthless, no nonsense woman.

"You were… not wrong," he admitted. "The circumstances which predicated my use of Lemnum Lethaeo included, among other things, the loss of a very dear friend at the very end of the war. Her death was," he hesitated. "Her death was partially my fault, and I have only just begun to come to terms with it. It is also true that I have little concept of how to function outside of conflict: I was targeted for recruitment when I was fifteen, and officially joined the Death Eaters at seventeen." The muggle's breath caught as he confirmed her suspicions of his loyalties, but she said nothing. "The Dark Lord's second in command was a harsh teacher. We suffered greater torture at her hands in the name of training than we ever did in battle. And," he added after another hesitation, "it is a… moderately well-known fact that I was a double agent for the last year and a half of the war. I am still in the rather unique position of not truly belonging on either side, and only slightly better trusted now that one of my masters is gone. Dumbledore showed up here tonight because I did not return to the castle as scheduled, and he feared I was attempting to escape, not out of any false-grandfatherly concern for my wellbeing."

Emma gave his scornful tone a crooked smile. "Got that, thanks. That's why I didn't want to let him in to see you. It was pretty clear you two don't get on when you were talking about him earlier. So, you're telling me you abuse potions to cover up PTSD?"

He scowled, then yawned. The adrenaline rush of his sudden awakening was wearing off, and he felt more exhausted than he had _before_ passing out, if that was possible. "I'm telling you I _was_ using – _not_ abusing – potions to ameliorate the psychological effects of my experience in the war, yes. And I'm telling you that now that I've started to come to terms with Lily's death, I will be taking a more proactive approach to dealing with those effects, regardless of your decision regarding Miss Holmes' apprenticeship. Though I really must ask you to decide before Dumbledore returns, because there are certain arrangements we should discuss while we have the privacy."

The muggle's eyes hardened as she looked down at him. "I will not enter Euros into such an arrangement without due consider-"

"Why was Lily's death important?" Euros asked, cutting off her guardian.

"What?" Emma turned to stare at the girl.

"His friend, Lily, her death, why did it matter? Why do you _care_?"

Severus joined her, more than a little confused by the abrupt change of subject, but answered honestly, taking a moment to phrase his response in a way he suspected she would understand: "I suppose because… a long time ago, I was Lily's like Hermione is yours."

That this was probably the _most_ honest answer he could give to that question was entirely coincidental.

Euros beamed.

"What?" Emma repeated, looking from her niece to her daughter, who was curled up in a visitor's chair, sleeping like a log – probably exhausted from foiling whatever magic Dumbledore had attempted to take his wand back. Severus wished he could have witnessed that particular scene.

Severus shrugged. "I unintentionally betrayed the person who was the center of my life for a very long time?" he hazarded as a translation of the relationship that had defined his life more than any other between the ages of six and twenty-one. 'The other half of my soul,' would have been closer, but far too soppy for words. He had been _hers_ , in every way that mattered, despite their inability to escape the realities of the war.

"Not _you_ ," the muggle said, looking pointedly at her niece.

"Oh! Yes."

"Yes?" Emma repeated.

"Yes. _I've_ considered it, and I want to do it. The apprenticeship."

"Euros…"

"Aunt Emma. You're going to ask for more time, and the professor is going to say yes, and I'm going to spend the next three days convincing you that this will work, and that will be three days wasted, because I already _know_ you're going to say yes, because I will not take 'no' for an answer. _You_ just don't want to rush into anything."

"Give me a _reason_ , Euros. He's… Even you have to see that he's unstable and that makes him unsuitable, despite his qualifications. We'll find someone else."

The girl shook her head stubbornly. "That's not important. Don't you see? He explained a human thing in a way that made sense to _me_. He _understands_. Better than you do, even," she added after the slightest pause.

Severus winced. He wouldn't have pushed the muggle so far, so quickly, if it had been him, but apparently the girl knew her aunt well enough to judge: rather than become offended at the idea that some stranger who had known the child for all of six (conscious) hours knew her better than she who had devoted years to raising her, the woman sighed. She seemed to deflate, almost visibly collapsing in on herself. She nodded to the girl before turning to Severus. "I'm going to want a contract."

 _Focus, Severus!_ "I'll have the standard apprenticeship papers written up and delivered to you," he answered, trying to think clearly through the fog of sleep that was closing in on him. "The Muggle Liaison Office at the Ministry will be able to point you toward a solicitor to confirm its validity. Their address should be in the packet prepared by the Deputy Head."

Emma nodded approvingly. "And if we should need to contact you?"

"It will take a few days, but I can set up forwarding post from an address in London. I'll include the details with the contract. We should meet with your solicitor to negotiate any necessary changes, sign it, and have it witnessed."

"We should also meet to go book shopping!" Euros interjected, with more genuine excitement than she had shown for any other topic yet.

"And for all the other supplies on that list," her aunt added. "I presume she _will_ need the standard Hogwarts equipment, if she is to sit in on lessons."

The wizard nodded. "Everything but the uniform – and I will put together a… more comprehensive book list." ' _Comprehensive'_ wasn't the word he had wanted, but it hardly mattered. "The required introductory texts are available in the school library. Your money would be better spent on more advanced theory and personal copies of reference books."

"Very well. Shall we plan to have done with it all at once?"

"That seems most reasonable," Severus allowed. He could feel Dumbledore pacing impatiently on the other side of the wall, and began to talk faster. "Send me a selection of convenient dates once you've had a chance to take the contract to a solicitor, preferably ah… in the first week of August. I will request a delay in your Hogwarts acceptance on your behalf, citing explorations of other options, which should give us plenty of time to get the paperwork finalized."

"Agreed," the muggle nodded, just as the Headmaster began probing rudely at the privacy charms Severus had set, a clear warning that he intended to break them momentarily.

Euros nodded, and Severus dropped the spells.

"Well, if that's all," Emma announced as the door opened, "I believe we'll be off. It seems I have a few letters to send."

"I hope to hear from you soon, Dr. Granger."

She gave him a rather peculiar smile as she offered, "You may call me Emma."

"Only if I am Severus," he answered, blinking in astonishment. He could not recall the last time anyone had extended an offer of informality to him, and had certainly not expected it given the hash he had made of the day. Hadn't she just been calling him an addict a moment ago?

"Severus, then," she nodded, gathering up her sleeping child.

"Emma."

"Bye, Professor Snape."

"Miss Holmes," he nodded.

The muggle and her niece paraded past the Chief Warlock, Supreme Mugwump and Headmaster of Hogwarts as though he were no more important than a house elf holding the door and disappeared from view. Severus was hard-pressed not to smirk as the old man looked after them with a rather irritable frown marring his grandfatherly façade.

The immediate comment of, "That child is going to be trouble, I can already tell," did nothing to ameliorate the urge, though "Are you well enough to apparate? I daresay Poppy would be more than happy to take a look at you and ensure that you are recovering from this little… ordeal, and I've been away from Hogwarts too long as it is," was enough to foil it.

Severus yanked the needle from his arm and rolled out of the bed, deliberately flashing his pasty arse at the old man before transfiguring the hospital gown to a plain black robe. "It's not as though I asked you to come!" he snarled. "I had everything under control!"

Dumbledore looked around pointedly at their circumstances.

"It wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't kept me answering questions for five bloody hours! _And_ they want more than the one week to consider their options, send off to the other schools for more information. She was even talking about finding a private tutor for the girl."

The Headmaster's eyes narrowed. "Did you tell them that she would be the only muggleborn in her class?"

"What was I supposed to say when they asked about demographics? You didn't _tell_ me I was supposed to _lie_."

"Severus…" Dumbledore said reprovingly.

"Don't give me that ' _Severus…'_ dragonshite, Dumbledore! I told them magic was real, gave them the information packet, answered _all_ their _fucking_ questions – If you wanted a friendly face to introduce them to Magical Britain, you should have sent someone else."

The old man hummed noncommittally. "And there were no… surprises, of any sort?"

"Were you _expecting_ some sort of 'surprise'?" Severus sneered. "No, don't answer, I don't even care. Unlike _some people_ , I have things to do today," he drawled. He removed the wire of the heartrate monitor from his finger and disapparated with a crack, leaving a sustained beep and a rather irritated (but not suspicious) Dumbledore in his wake. He wasn't lying: he needed to send a letter to Narcissa to get a recommendation for a solicitor, and then sleep for as long as he possibly could. He had no idea what the blasted muggles had been pumping into his bloodstream, but whatever it was, he could hardly keep his eyes open, and after the past three sleepless nights, he was ready to take whatever he could get.


	7. Diagon and Knockturn

It took three days for the contract to arrive, and another two for Emma to arrange to meet with the solicitor recommended by the Muggle Liaison Office. During those five days, Hermione explained the existence of magic to Dan, Emma explained the fact that Euros would be going to boarding school (and that her father would be paying for it) to Siger, and Euros spent a great deal of time making lists of additional questions for the professor who would be her Master.

It was hard to say whether Dan was more excited about the fact that magic was real or that there would soon be far greater (physical) distance between his daughter and his niece. (Euros did not point out that Hermione would be joining her in the magical world when she was old enough. There was plenty of time for Dan to come to that realization on his own.) Siger was insufferably smug about the fact that Emma apparently 'couldn't handle' dealing with Euros, but did agree to pay for her education, at least 'until she gets herself expelled.' Since Euros was fairly certain that one could not be expelled from an apprenticeship (the contract seemed rather binding for both parties) she had no qualms about accepting this condition. The list of questions grew so long that Euros reorganized it, leaving spaces so that she could post it to Severus and he could simply write the answers before returning it. If their little interrogation on that first Saturday was any indication, it would take at least ten hours for him to answer each question in person.

She had not expected to see him again so soon, but as it turned out, the solicitor Emma had contacted thought the contract Severus had had drafted was more than fair to Euros. He did raise an eyebrow at the clause allowing Severus blanket permission to use legilimency on Euros until she reached the age of consent and could tell him 'no' on her own, but had nodded hesitantly when Euros had told him that she wanted to learn the mind arts.

Since there were no changes that needed to be made, the solicitor had 'floo-called' the professor, and he had come through the fire to sign it that same afternoon. Euros had given him her notebook in person, after adding 'Why did you write the contract in my favor?' to the end of the list, and he had arranged, after a short negotiation with Emma, to take Euros shopping on Monday, while Emma and Dan were at work and Hermione at daycare. Emma was very disappointed about this, because she wanted to see more of the magical world, but she had no real grounds to object, seeing as she _had_ just signed a contract to the effect that Severus had as much right to act as Euros' guardian as she did herself.

It was on that Monday that Euros decided she actually _liked_ her Master. She had decided she wanted him for a teacher when he managed to so effortlessly invade her mind. She had decided that he would probably be good at it when he had explained his own so-very-human experience of loving and losing his friend in a way that she could almost relate to. But it was not until they had spent several hours alone together that she decided she would voluntarily choose to submit herself to his company.

Quite simply, being around him was _easier_ than being around anyone else she had ever met.

The only irksome thing was that she couldn't exactly say _why_.

He had appeared with her notebook in hand two minutes before their appointed meeting time. Each question had an answer, even if it was 'We'll cover this in lessons,' or something snarky like 'That is, in fact, the fundamental question of magical theory. If and when you figure it out, let me know,' down to 'To do otherwise would be socially unacceptable, given that you are muggleborn and I am a known Death Eater.'

After a quick greeting to Emma, Dan, and Hermione, the wizard had instructed her to take his arm, and she had experienced apparition for the first time. It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation – it felt almost as though she was being compressed from every direction at once, as though the magic was forcing her down into a single point, or transporting her through one before allowing her to expand again when they reached their destination.

Diagon Alley was loud, colorful, and sparsely populated, though the people who were present somehow managed to make it seem crowded with their sweeping robes and expansive gestures: for the most part they seemed well-suited to the environment. Euros kept close to Severus as they made their way to the bank at the end of the street: she presumed they could not apparate there directly for security purposes. Along the way, she took note of the variety of shops, most of which seemed to sell various hand-made goods; the people, as Aunt Emma had taught her; and catalogued the ways in which this little magical enclave differed from the outside world. There were many: too many to reasonably list. Even the _air_ smelled different, as though they had somehow managed to filter out the exhaust fumes and replace it with something more… organic.

The bank was run by goblins: humanoid creatures with an olive tint to their otherwise pale skin, dark hair and eyes, and pointed teeth and ears. They ranged in height from somewhere around one meter up to her own 148 centimeters, appeared to have an extra joint in their exceptionally long fingers, and wore, of all things, pinstriped three-piece suits. Severus informed her when she asked that this was a deliberate attempt to distance themselves from the mainstream culture of Magical Britain, which was dominated by wizards. She looked forward to reading about the history of goblin-human relations, which, from the hints Severus gave, sounded fascinating. She also couldn't help but wonder how many other intelligent species there were in the magical world, which was not something she had previously even thought to consider. There was not time to ask in the bank: the goblin teller exchanged the allowance Siger had sent to Emma for school supplies for magical currency in a matter of minutes after what Euros presumed was an exchange of formalities in the goblin language.

From the bank, they proceeded to the entryway of a small tailor shop, where they were met by a very blonde witch about the same age as Severus. Her bearing screamed entitlement and she looked at Euros with the sort of assessing gaze the younger witch normally associated with psychologists. Severus had invited her, it seemed, for he greeted her by thanking her for joining them.

She raised a perfectly arched brow. "Well, when you offered the first introduction to your new apprentice in exchange for supervising her outfitting, I could hardly say _no_. Though I was under the impression you loathed teaching children."

Severus snorted. "I do. Euros, meet Lady Narcissa Malfoy nee Black, unofficial leader of the Allied Dark Bloc within the Wizengamot. Narcissa, this is my apprentice, Euros Holmes."

There was a moment of awkward silence as Euros wondered which of them was supposed to speak next. Apparently it was her, though by the time she realized this, Lady Malfoy was saying, "Well met, Miss Holmes," and then, clearly addressing Severus again, "How is it that… a _muggleborn_ comes by a name like Euros?"

"I believe it is short for Europa," he answered smoothly. Euros was not surprised. Her full name had been on the contract they had signed, after all. "Surely you did not think that purebloods hold a monopoly on… unusual naming conventions."

"Of course not, but…" the woman flushed slightly.

"No," Severus said firmly. "I have not had the opportunity to confirm, but she is almost certainly muggleborn, and no kin to you."

Lady Malfoy's blush grew more prominent. "Of course not. Though the resemblance is uncanny."

"Believe me, Narcissa," the wizard said drily. "You have _no_ idea."

"Why would you think us kin, Lady Malfoy?" Euros asked curiously.

She hesitated before she answered. "You remind me of my sister."

Euros suspected a lie, though she couldn't say for certain whether it had been: she suspected the blonde was using Occlumency as Severus had demonstrated, to keep her thoughts to herself. Before Euros could enquire about the sister in an effort to verify the lie, Severus intervened. "Narcissa, if you are quite satisfied with your introduction, I would very much like to accomplish today's tasks before the Old Goat wonders where I've buggered off to and comes looking."

"Oh, very well, Severus. You owe me for this, though."

"Hardly," the wizard drawled. "You've no daughters of your own to shop for. If anything it is _I_ who am doing _you_ the favor, here."

Narcissa grinned. "Perhaps. Come, then, Miss Euros." She swept aside a curtain, revealing a fitting room which was occupied by another witch, this one a much older brunette, her hair streaked with grey. She switched to fluent French, apologizing for their tardiness, thanking the witch (Mme. Bouchard) for taking the appointment at such short notice, and introducing Euros as 'the one we discussed, in need of apprentice's robes, and, I think, a little bit of everything, no? I had not realized, but her wardrobe is sadly lacking, and it would not do to have the apprentice of any friend of mine reflect poorly on her Master's standing, after all. If you recall the styles Bella preferred in her youth, something to that effect would suit marvelously. All on my account, of course.'

Euros was stripped and measured efficiently, and over the hour that followed, dressed in a dozen different garments, from bloomers and blouses to shirts with puffed sleeves and heavy, swishy pantaloons, to tunics and full-length robes, cloaks and coats, all of them cut from finer fabric than even Siger's wardrobe. Once these were pinned appropriately to her form, she watched in amazement as the witch directed the construction of copies, scissors snipping through cloth in midair and needles dancing through the panels to create each garment.

The old Frenchwoman muttered the whole time about how this was a rush job, and the least of her art, but Narcissa brushed off her complaints with a smile. "There is hardly any point in enchanting children's clothes, Madame – they grow so quickly. But you know there is no one else I would trust to realize this," she handed over a sheet of parchment.

"Well, be _that_ as it may… Who is this friend of yours?" the seamstress asked, examining it closely.

Narcissa smirked. "Severus Snape."

The old woman cackled. "The Spy? Very well, then."

A black over-robe, trimmed with white, rose into the air, a bevy of needles threading themselves and preparing to dive into the fabric over the right breast. The Frenchwoman drew a second wand and began a sustained chant, moving it in intricate patterns as she directed the needles to embroider a symbol with the other. The whole shape began to glow with magic after nearly ten minutes, at which point the witch cut off her spells abruptly. The light faded to reveal a small circle of black silk surrounding a silvery-grey cauldron with three distinct plumes of greenish smoke rising out of it, the stitches so tiny as to be indistinguishable, if not for their color. As Euros watched, the flecks of green shifted, forming the illusion of a single emerald serpent coiling out of the cauldron, its head turned toward her before dissipating again into smoke.

Narcissa grinned and clapped delightedly. "It's perfect!"

Euros was obliged to try on all of the clothes again so that Narcissa could approve their fit as the seamstress repeated the process on two additional robes, and a patch which she could move from one garment to another. The blonde witch nattered on the entire time about proper accessorizing and shoes to accompany each outfit, and cast several spells on Euros' hair, whisking it up and out of the way.

When she was finally returned to the entryway where Snape was waiting, she was fully dressed in magical clothes: black pantaloons, a tightly fitted, sleeveless grey blouse, and an equally sleeveless black over-robe which closed only at the waist, the badge stuck in place with a spell. Her muggle sandals had been transfigured to resemble their magical equivalent.

Severus did a double-take, which caused Narcissa to laugh.

"I was going to ask what was taking so long to make up three apprentice's robes," he said snidely, "but this does rather explain. I _do_ hope you are not expecting me to pay for your little dress up party."

"Don't be ridiculous, Severus. You couldn't afford it. What do you think of your crest?"

He leaned down to inspect the small circle of embroidered silk, and almost immediately reared back with a quick intake of breath and the fiercest glare Euros had ever seen on anyone. "You must be joking, Narcissa." She shook her head, grinning again. "That's not funny."

"On the contrary, I think it's very funny. And also eminently suitable. You _are_ , after all, a potions master and the youngest Head of Slytherin in what? Five centuries?"

"And I suppose it's strictly coincidental that it bears such a resemblance to…" he broke off, rubbing at the skull and snake tattoo Euros had seen on his arm in hospital.

Narcissa laughed. "Perhaps not _strictly_."

" _Narcissa!_ You cannot… You _cannot_ take this particular girl and dress her like Bellatrix and put anything resembling _that_ symbol on her chest. It's just…"

"I did design the crest before I saw her, you realize? But I stand by it. They will all be thinking it anyway. _I_ thought it, and I _know_ that Bellatrix was never pregnant. You might as well use it."

"There are other factors of which you are not aware," the wizard bit out.

"Such as?" the lady drawled.

Severus hesitated, so Euros, bored with their debate, interrupted: "I believe the phrase he used was 'magically precocious, highly intelligent, dark-inclined natural Occlumens and Legilimens.'" Narcissa looked at her with unveiled astonishment.

"Keep that to yourself!" Severus snapped. Euros wasn't sure which of them he was addressing. It could have been both.

"And you're sure…?" the woman asked him, hesitant again.

"As sure as I can be without doing an actual inheritance test, Black," the wizard said waspishly.

"Malfoy," she corrected him absently, then shrugged. "I still stand by it. You're a brilliant, subtle man, Severus Snape, but you are not a politician. Ask yourself what Evans would have done."

Severus froze for a full five seconds before he ground out, "Evans was mad. And she had the charisma to pull that sort of thing off."

Narcissa hummed and nodded. "But she was also very, _very_ good at playing a crowd. And she would have told you what I'm telling you, which is that when you have no chance of convincing anyone of the truth, you really have no choice but to try to control the lies they will believe."

"And you would have them believe – what? That I of all people somehow managed to gain responsibility for _his_ daughter? _Their_ daughter?" the wizard scoffed. "You know Bellatrix hated me."

"But _most_ people know only that you are the highest ranking Death Eater to have been cleared of all charges, without claiming Imperius, of course."

"Of course," Severus interjected.

Narcissa smirked. "And for the record, she didn't _hate_ you. She didn't _trust_ you, but she considered you one of her best students. Theoretically, if I had to choose someone to teach her daughter, I could do worse."

There was a very tense pause, and then: "How far do you want to take this, Narcissa?"

The politician smiled mysteriously. It looked like a well-practiced expression. "I could not possibly confirm or deny what my sister got up to during the months I was at Hogwarts each year, but I would be lying if I said the prospect of a revitalization of the House of Black was unwelcome news." Severus raised an eyebrow, and the witch's smile transformed into a smirk. "Not that I'm proposing anything at the moment, but..."

"I… see," the wizard said slowly. "Matters of blood aside."

"The Eternal House has held mottos far older than ' _Tonjours Pur,'"_ the aristocrat answered evenly. " _Semper Meri Sint_ was never about blood." She twirled a lock of light hair around a finger in a way Euros was certain held some significance, for the girlish action did not suit her persona at all, but she could not fathom what that significance might be. "But as I said, I propose nothing at the moment. And as much as I would enjoy discussing the history of my house at greater length, I am expected at the Glass Octopus in a matter of minutes, so I fear I must cut our conversation short."

"As you will," Severus said with a short bow.

Narcissa nodded and presented Euros with the bag which, rather improbably, managed to hold the entirety of her new wardrobe, as well as the muggle clothing she had forgone in favor of her current attire. "Miss Euros," she said, flashing another well-practiced smile, "It has been a unique pleasure."

"Thank you, Lady Malfoy," Euros replied politely.

"Oh, I think Ms. Narcissa will be sufficient," the witch suggested, though her tone was uncompromising. "And do not hesitate to owl me at Malfoy Manor if you have any questions regarding Magical Britain. Severus is a veritable compendium of information, but our perspectives on society are… rather different."

Euros imagined that was more than a bit of an understatement. There was something indefinably working-class about Severus, despite his obvious education and what appeared to be an extensive knowledge of all levels of Magical British society. It came out in the way he handled money and his scornful tone when discussing the political structures of the nation, and even the fact that he had apparently refused to have his teeth fixed – Euros refused to believe it was impossible to do so with magic, given that most wizards seemed to have fairly well-maintained orthodontics. Narcissa, by contrast, was clearly an upper-class witch, born and raised. To apparently think nothing of outfitting Euros with a full wardrobe apparently on a whim spoke volumes, and that was without considering the fact that Severus had introduced her as a leading politician in the governing body of Magical Britain.

Severus was, she understood quite suddenly, an outsider in almost as many ways as Euros herself, while Narcissa was an insider, and a very successful one at that. He had doubtless asked her to see to Euros' outfitting as his apprentice because she was more likely to do it properly. If Euros wanted to fit in, she realized, the older witch would be a valuable source of information on the niceties of proper social interaction.

"Thank you, Ms. Narcissa," she answered automatically, and the witch left the small waiting room with another grin and a nod at Severus, who rolled his eyes after her. When he led Euros out the door a moment later, the blonde was already out of sight.

"So what was all that about?" the girl asked her Master quietly, following him toward a small side-street.

He cast a spell silently before answering. " _That_ was Narcissa embracing an idea with far more enthusiasm than I had anticipated."

"And what idea was that?"

Severus smirked. "Narcissa Black was the youngest sister of Bellatrix Black, the Dark Lord's… consort, I suppose is probably the best term."

Ah. That was the piece of information she had been missing. She reviewed the conversation, slotting it into place: Narcissa must have thought Euros was the daughter of her sister and the Dark Lord. And though Severus had told her it wasn't true, she was obviously not entirely certain, especially when informed that Euros shared certain other qualities with the Dark Lord, as Severus had told her the week before. Nor did she seem opposed to encouraging that impression in others. In fact, unless Euros was very much mistaken, the politician had actually floated the idea of claiming Euros as a scion of her natal house, provided she met some unspoken qualification. What that was and exactly why she might propose such a thing, the young witch had no idea, but… Had Severus predicted that? No. That had to have been what he meant by 'more enthusiasm than anticipated.' But that meant he _had_ expected some degree of negotiation, or perhaps advice on how to respond to the fact that others were bound to reach the same conclusion.

"What is the significance of _Tonjours Pur_ and _Semper Miri Sint_?" she asked.

The wizard snorted. "The former, the current motto of the House of Black, is a corruption of the latter idea. It is now most often interpreted as meaning 'always pure of blood,' however, according to one of Narcissa's late cousins, _Semper Miri Sint_ was originally ' _Semper Meri Sint Tenebrarum,'_ referring to the magic of the house and their devotion to the Dark Powers. The House of Black fell with the Dark Lord. I believe it would be safe to interpret her reaction to mean that regardless of the truth of the matter, if the Dark were to rally around the supposed child of Black and de Mort, she would endorse the legitimacy of said child, up to and including arranging a covert adoption into the House of Black. I had forgotten how utterly ridiculous Blacks can be about the wellbeing of their House." At Euros' confused expression he added, "There are no remaining potential heirs of House Black outside of Azkaban. It seems Narcissa is somewhat more desperate to ensure the survival of the name of the House than I had expected. It would be most irregular to adopt a muggleborn child to continue the line, though I have no doubt that there is some precedent in their history. And Narcissa is more tolerant of muggleborns than many of her family."

"Who is Evans? Did you all go to school together?" she asked, wondering how two such different people had ever come into contact with each other, let alone developed the sort of relationship where they asked each other for favors years later.

"Evans… Evans is – _was_ – Lily. And yes, we did go to school together. Narcissa was the year ahead of Lily and myself, in Slytherin. I would not call her a friend, but a strong and dependable ally, certainly. Come."

Before she could ask another question to try to clarify the question of how their alliance had begun, or why the witch was apparently open to the idea of adopting a muggleborn to continue her family line, the wizard turned sharply, leading her to the doorway of a small shop. There was no sign to identify its purpose or owner, which seemed to be the norm on the side-street they had taken off the main Alley. The street itself was more poorly maintained than Diagon, and the people who moved from shop to shop did so quickly, most of them wearing dark cloaks with hoods up. Few shopfronts displayed their wares, and most of them looked closed, including the one where Severus knocked impatiently.


End file.
